
Book 'j 55 




1 ?«icliel sculp*- 



S ' ' VH; PELLir (>. 



^^^^ 



. THE 



BUSIES ©? mmm, 

BY 

SILVIO FELMC'D, 



.Tustitia enim perpetiia est et ijimior talis. 



X' 



lOLClEITIEM & C9 SOSO S? 
JSS4, 




yy/^^^ 




SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. 



My Dear Sir, 

Personal respect, and admiration of the pure 
and noble sentiments which you have ever sought to inculcate? 
induce me to place your name in the front of this little 
volume. May it merit the approbation of men like yourself, 
and ^^in your favour by advancing, in our country, the cause 
of genuine good taste, always conjoined with that of religion 
and virtue. 

That you may derive all the happiness which flows from such 
a source, is the earnest wish of my heart. 

Yours faithfully, 

THOMAS ROSCOE. 



THE 



DUTIES OF MEN. 

/ 

BY SILVIO PELLICO ; 

AUTHOR OF " MY TEN YEARs' IMPRISONMENT ; " " FRANCESCa DA 
RIMINI," AND OTHER WORKS. 

Craitslatetr from tje Utalian 
BY THOMAS ROSCOE, 

AUTHOR OF " THE LANDSCAPE ANNUAL." 



E che posso bramar, se '1 tutto e nulla, 
. Signer, senza tua grazia ? A Te di novo 

^ . s ' Sovra me stesso pur rifuggo, e prego 

»r^*^ Teco sovra me stesso unirme amando. 



9- • 



Tasso. 



LONDON : 
LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMAN j 

RICHTER AND CO., SOHO SQUARE; MILLIKEN AND SON, DUBLIN; 
ADAM BLACK, EDINBURGH. 

MDCCCXXXIY. 



^^\^^ 

^^<> 



K 



BRADBliRY AVP KVAN9. PRIirrCRf, WfriTCFBIAiU- 



LIFE 

OF 

SILVIO PELLICO. 



It is from a deep conviction of the importance of 
the great moral held up to our view in the life 
and writings of Silvio Pellico, (I mean, the prac- 
tical truth of the christian religion^) that I am 
induced, at this moment, to bring the subject 
more fully and circumstantially before the English 
public. For not only do I conceive this moral to 
be of equal importance to individuals and to man- 
kind, but that it applies with peculiar force to 
existing times and circumstances, when the rapid 
growth of population, and of popular energy and 
power, promise, at no distant period, to merge 
former institutions in a more christian and com- 
prehensive system, and render them better adapted 
to national wants and interests. It is from this 
consideration that I undertook to present ^' The 
Duties of Men'' to my fellow-countrymen^ and 
a2 



U MFE OF 

to illustrate thcni, in all their strength and nob' 
ness, from the life of their generous, high-mi ndeu, 
and truly patriotic author. 

It is now almost universally admitted by all 
parties, in civilised communities, that, without 
education, without a more liberal diffusion of 
knowledge, and cultivation of the social duties and 
affections in the great mass of the people, the 
most serious evils may be apprehended. In the 
impending changes, which the state of the human 
mind — half unshackled by the press from its old 
political bondage, and which pulilical hnoivlcdge 
renders inevitable, — there cannot be otherwise 
any durable peace, any security to life and pro- 
perty, any safeguard or barrier powerful enough 
to resist the torrent of popular revolutions — a 
torrent of opinion far wider and more resistless 
in its course than that of brute, barbaric force, 
which plunged the world into the long-enduring 
darkness of the middle ages. 

But a new era, in connexion with national and 
social education, and, consequently, with political 
institutions, is at length drawing nigh : the grand 
experiment is being made, whether alterations 
and improvements in the character of man and of 
society can be effected without undergoing the 



SILVIO PELLICO. Ill 

^vere ordeal of sanguinary revolution. No in- 
.,,ances^ at leasts are yet thought to be on record — 
not even in the foundation of the United States 
and in the recent change of the French dynasty; 
but were wisdom and moderation more frequently 
shown by other parties no less than by the people, 
these desirable results of popular movements 
would be, perhaps^ not of rare occurrence. The 
moderation and judgment they must display 
would be gratifying to humanity ; calculated 
to raise the people in their own eyes ; and 
prove to them that they can achieve^ and are 
entitled to^ good government, — and that it is to 
be obtained without the employment of other 
than moral and constitutional means. It is, 
however,, a question, whether the mere diffusion 
of knowledge — the comparative intelligence, or 
love of scientific pursuits^ among a people — will 
prepare and enable them to go through a pacific 
course of political amelioration^ any more than 
the possession of lofty genius or singular skill in 
an individual will confer upon him the brighter 
moral qualities of the heart. It will be founds 
indeed, that there often exists a singular disparity 
between the intellectual and the political condi- 
tion of a nation ; innumerable instances, in which 



IV LIFE OF 

tiio people AYc tar in udvaiici' (►f the spirit of their 
^overmiieiits, and possess a degree of enlighten- 
ment, and a vigour of intelleet capable of grap- 
pling with subjects, relating to their political 
situation and connexions, in a way to prove to 
modern statesmen that there is at least no means 
of establishing a monopoly of political talent. 

It is thus we see that enlightened patriotism 
too often exists either in advance, or in actual 
opposition, to the spirit and policy of its rulers; — 
\vc see it resisted, — repressed, — borne down by 
moving masses of steel, — tracked with the blood- 
hound sagacity of spies, — incarcerated in living 
tombs, — pouring its blood hi torrents upon the 
scaffold, or doomed to waste a life of lingering 
penance in the mine and at the galley. Yet why 
this bitter antipathy between man and man ? 
betwxen different interests and different orders, 
all equal in the eye of God, for the sake of a little 
discrepancy in external position and circum- 
stance during a life — but a span's length in point 
of duAition! To what grievous error is it to be 
attributed, at a period of the world when know- 
ledge has opened all her stores, — science traversed 
the most distant regions, for the general benefit 
of mankind, — and education raised her instructive 



SILVIO PELLICO. V 

voice^ and held forth the guiding hand^ to direct 
us in the pursuit of our duties ? 

It is in the solution of this strange social 
enigma that we approach the one moral truth so 
admirably elucidated in the life and sufferings of 
Silvio Pellico. It is in this we trace the opera- 
tions of his comprehensive and subtle mind^— the 
process of his reasoning, — and the minutest traits 
of his extraordinary character^ all combining to a 
single mighty end, — the object of all his efforts 
and aspirations. Be it ours to supply, in some 
measure, the key to his beautiful and noble system, 
in its application no less to the political than to 
the moral reformation"^ of mankind ; to apply it, in 
all its national and social bearings, — as a duty we 
feel due no less to our own countrymen at this 
eventful era, than to the genius and magnanimous 
character of the author. 

The ardent and penetrating mind of Pellico 
became early aware that no durable good — no real 
improvement in social and political institutions- 
had followed in the train of those violent and 
blood-stained revolutions recorded in the annals 
of our race. Hence he derived his well-known 
repugnance to all-violent measures ; nor was this 
founded in reason alone : to his natural gentleness. 



▼1 LIFE OF 

his nohic Icolings, and ])ootical tcniporameiit, wise 
and conciliatory principles were far more congenial. 
He felt that his country had been long sufticienllv 
advanced in knowledge and civilisation to deserve 
a milder and liaj)pier form of government, but he 
strongly advocated the principle of conciliation in 
all he said and did — in his poetical, and in his 
prose writings — in private and in public; yet 
neither liis blamelessness of life and principles, 
the power of knowledge, nor the progress of civilis- 
ation availed to save him, and his noblest fellow- 
countrymen, from the rage of political persecution. 
The utter powerlessness of these moral weapons, 
sharpened as they were by clear-sighted reason, 
by justice, and by love of independence, when 
placed in array against the hordes of ignorance and 
irreligious barbarism, frequently recurred to his 
mind during his solitary prison hours, and led 
him to reflect, long and deeply, on the subject of 
man's nature, and tlie causes which produced so 
much corruption and unhappiness in his indivi- 
dual, his social, and his political relations. He 
had beheld the futility of that wisdom, that 
national intelligence, though coiiil)ined with the 
utmost devotedness of spirit, derived from worldly 
sources, which arrays patriotism against hordes of 



SILVIO PELLICO. Vll 

slaves ; he felt that the only power to be relied 
upon was a moral and religious power ■ and that 
the immemorial failure of freedom in achieving 
what is good and great in human character^ as in 
human institutions^ arose from the daring and im- 
pious substitution of man's low passions^ in his 
individual, his social, and his political capacity, for 
the pure, healing precepts, and impressive com- 
mands of his Divine master. He saw that, with- 
out individual virtue, there could be no social hap- 
ness; that, without social virtue there could be no 
national happiness; and that, without national 
virtue, founded on these elementary principles, 
there could be no political happiness, no inde- 
pendence, no liberty worth either living or dying 
for. By tracing these, and all other virtues, back 
to their primeval source, he found the root of all 
in genuine, practical Christianity ; he found that 
unless they derived their nutriment from this 
source, they everywhere faded and perished. He 
saw that they had been put to the test, age after 
age, country after country ; — ^they had been che- 
rished by the idolatry of the brave, the martyr- 
dom of the good and the great ; they had been 
weighed in the balance by time and experience, and 
found wanting. He still traced, through successive 



vni LIFE OF 

revolutions, despotism, oppression, corruption, in 
justice,and public crimes of the deepest dye, triun 
j)hiint over the mere liuman virtues — over all tin 
goodness and the greatness of man's qualities , 
for this armour was not of celestial proof. The 
most wonderful of moral discoveries was not yet 
made — the possible power of Christianity over the 
most corrupt and despotic minds. After the 
test of establishing its empire, therefore, over his 
own life and actions, it could not but strike 
Pellico, that, by the dissemination of a knowledge 
of the happiness he had derived from the practical 
influence of this faith, he would be creating an 
engine of immense irresistible might, at once 
against the corruption of the people, and the im* 
pious supremacy which they had dared to confer 
upon their idol conquerors under whose scourge 
they have since writhed. He must have seen and 
felt that by no other process than that of their 
true conversion to Christianity, from that state of 
unrcgenerated and worse than Pharisaical blind- 
ness, in which the rulers of nations denominated 
each other christian, and protectors of the chris- 
tian faith, could the corrupt powers of this world 
be shaken— the thrones of despotism gradually 
undermined — injustice and oppression of every 



SILVIO PELLICO. IX 

kind made insensibly to disappear before the 
radiant light of pure Christianity. To be free, 
he, doubtless, reasoned, a people must be vir- 
tuous and religious ; and once individually and 
nationally inspired by a sense of the goodness, 
the greatness, the superior happiness of a reli- 
gion as benevolent as it is holy, all shapes and 
forms of tyranny, corruption, wicked hatred 
between high and low, with a thousand other evils 
which afflict humanity, will ultimately vanish 
like foul and heavy mists before the splendour of 
the morning sun. 

Such^ as it appears to us, is the doctrine of 
practical Christianity, such is that of Silvio Pellico; 
and as kings and potentates of other times have 
already bowed their head and kissed the foot of 
ecclesiastical sovereignty, so will they again, 
brought by a nobler process, lower their regal 
crests, and do better obeisance to that holier and 
greater power ; to the sovereignty of the gospel in 
the hearts of future and happier nations. This 
christian consummation no potentate can resist; 
for it is the power of conversion to the religion of 
the gospel yet to be wrought in the hearts of 
princes as in those of all classes of their subjects — 
b 



X lAi'i. or 

of rival ii:iti(His, of :ill con Hicting authorities and 
powers — not one of wlioni, when this glorions 
conversion now in ])ro<xress is once achieved, will 
dare to lift his hand against his brother man, to 
enslave him or to slay. 

Entluisiastic or extravagant as such a doctrine 
may now appear in tlie opinion of many, is it not, 
we would ask, in harmony \\'ith the wlude spirit — 
with the history, and with all the wonderful 
triumphs and results, of tlie Gospel of Christ ? It 
is not indeed the doctrine which is new, it is only 
the great application of it to the entire scope of 
man's duties which is tlic novel feature in the life 
and works of Silvio Pellico; and to those who feel 
inclined to pronounce these views wild and chinuv 
rical we would reply by pointing to their practical 
illustration by him under the most adverse and 
fearful circumstances — and in particular to that 
noble magnanimitv, that generous forgiveness of 
his bitterest enemies, to be derived only from the 
grand model he holds out to us in the character of 
our Redeemer^ and from the religion he left to us 
in his last will and testament. If there be any 
bold enough, wise, learned or philosophic enough, 
to impugn sucli an ap[)lication of the doctrines of 
scripture — and they are those of Silvio Pellico — let 



JjlLVIO PELLICO. XI 

tliem_, in their extravagant and imaginary superi- 
ority^ supply human nature with some speedier and 
more effectual method of eradicating its deep-seated 
corruptions^ and its miseries — let them give us 
something real for the dream (as they aifect to 
call it) of hoping, by appeals to the reason and the 
good feeling of mankind in the language of divine 
truths to render them happier,, because wiser and 
better. 

It is this appeal breathing, throughout^, the most 
ennobling spirit of Christianity, which constitutes 
the chief value of the little work entitled ^' The 
Duties of Men." But admirable as it is in its 
design and object — ^ adapted alike to private 
and to public life — presenting the essence of 
social and national education— scattered through- 
out a variety of works, aud founding all its 
reasoning on the basis of religious education; 
it would still fall short of the object I have in 
view without it were elucidated by the tenour of 
the author's life, and the recommendation of its 
principles In his writings and in his actions. To 
have done this, however, before attempting to ex- 
plain the one pervading doctrine, applicable to all 
sects and parties, and which may be termed the 
philosophy of our author's works—the system to 



XH LIl'L OF 

which hih mind, liis hahits, and affections arc 
referable — wouhl liave heeii to liave presented 
to the reader only an isolated fraf^nient of his cha- 
racter, not evidence upon which to form a right 
appreciation of the whole scope and tendency of 
liis works; and more especially of his '' Duties 
of i\Ien." 

F'rom the additions to *• The Ten Years' Im- 
prisonment," published by his fellow- sufferer, 
JNIaroncelli, we learn that Silvio Pellico was born 
in the city of Saluzzo in Piedmont, about the 
year I'JVjd^. Sprung from a highly respectable 
family of some fortune, he possessed all the ad- 
vantages of early education, and still more of 
early example in the disposition and character of 
his parents. They practised the filial duties 
which they inculcated; for when Silvio with a 
twin-sister, named Rosina, first saw the light, both 
the parents of his father still survived, and received 
those uniformly amiable and devoted attentions 
from ///e?;- children, which could not fail to im- 
press the dawning reason and sensibilities of their 
immediate offspring. Two of these were older 
and two were younger than the subject of our 
present memoir; but there was another and still 

• 8ct' the Italian edition, published by Mr. Rolandi. 



SILVIO PELLICO. Xm 

more decided advantage — in addition to family 
character and position— which Silvio enjoyed in 
the superior mind and accomplishments, no less 
than the religious dispositions of his mother^ a 
native of Savoy, whose maiden name belonged to 
the house of Tournier. It has often been remarked 
that the characters of extraordinary men have 
been more or less moulded by early maternal care 
and judgment; and it has almost uniformly been 
asserted by genius itself, in various walks of 
literature and of science^ that to this source was 
to be chiefly attributed the degree of excellence to 
which it attained. In all the vicissitudes of 
fortune^ the mother of Silvio retained the same 
courage and the same well-regulated affection for 
her children ; and^ in virtuous opposition to the pre- 
vailing custom^ she was at once their nurse and 
their earliest instructress. Nor was his father Ono- 
rato a man of inferior mind ; his good sense and his 
sound views united with a poetical temperament 
—which in the son rose into the fire of brilliant 
genius — called forth the suspicions and persecu- 
tions of political enemies. In his flight from 
his native city^ and its consequent sufferings and 
sorrows^ he had occasion to give his son those first 
lessons of patience and humility in the school of 
b 2 



XIV LIFE OF 

adversity, wliicli lie applied with such admirable 
courage and fortitude, under circumstances the 
most alllicting and appalling to which human 
nature can he subjected. 

On his father's restoration to his country and 
liis property, the lionie of Silvio presented at once 
a model of gi.'uerous ]i()sj)italltv, cliristian charity, 
and courtesy towards neighbours, combined witli 
a j)ropriety and elegance of manners which made 
it the favourite resort of genius and of social virtue. 
Here expanded the germs of that strong filial affec- 
tion which he always felt and expressed with so 
much enthusiasm; elevated, as it was, by the 
esteem which he entertained for the characters of 
those he loved. With liberality of feeling and 
warm devotion they united general tolerance in 
matters of religious faith; and it was thus that 
their gifted son had the good fortune to escape 
the infection of all hereditary enmities, su'per- 
stiti(m, fanaticism, and injustice, while he had an 
example of cultivating sentiments of charity 
towards the superstitious, the fanatical, and the 
unjust themselves 

The education of Silvio thus consisted, not in a 
dry routine of intellectual accpiirements unac- 
companied by the formation of character, but, 



SILVIO PELLICO. XV 

under maternal skill and devotion, in a study of 
example, of. character, of society, morals, and 
manners, all which she assiduously held up to 
view, and illustrated from the daily and hourly 
occurrences of domestic life. The object of a 
moral and religious education like this — as dis- 
tinct from education in the ordinary sense of 
the word, as cunning from wisdom, or prudence 
from virtue — is to acquire those qualities 
which, founded on christian principle as well 
as on reason and knowledge, produce har- 
mony and strength of character. Such a cha- 
racter alone is capable of executing the good 
intentions, the virtuous motives and resolves 
which it conceives, and of resisting all the temp- 
tations to pursue an opposite line of conduct. 
The result of the prevailing system, on the other 
hand, conducted upon mere prudential and intel- 
lectual grounds, is to produce either undisci- 
plined or really weak and ignoble characters; 
inasmuch as, although they may be equally aware 
of the direction of their duties, nourish equally 
good intentions, and form virtuous resolutions, 
they will possess neither the strength to under- 
take, nor consistency of purpose to persevere in a 
virtuous course of action. 



The niind ol' Silvio Tcllico was not formed in 
the latter of these modern schools. His educa- 
tion was not an isolated fragment of his exist- 
ence, a mere conrse of college studies, without 
reference to the past, or without influence upon 
his future career. It differed from the erroneous 
systc^m pursued in most countries, and in few 
perhaps more than England at the present day, 
the fallacy of wliich consists in considering edu- 
cation as something in itself distinct from the 
future life and conduct of man, distinct from the 
teaching and development of his duties in his 
social and j)rofessional relations, preparatory to 
his discharging those of a good citizen, a good 
patriot;, and a good subject. It was not made to 
consist in filling up a certain portion of time; in 
acquiring a given sum of intellectual attainments 
within a fixed period ; or being initiated into the 
conventional form and manners of college life, 
and habits of collegiate studies, too often at direct 
variance with the future career and course of 
action it is intended we should pursue. In this 
lies the grievous error hitherto pervading all 
national systems of education, and wliich no 
enlightened and improved views, from the time 
A\ hen IMilton ^\ rote to the present moment, have 



SILVIO PELLICO. XVU 

succeeded in eradicating from the old established 
code more or less in force throughout the existing 
institutions of every land. To those leading in- 
stitutions the systems partially introduced by 
Pestalozzi^ by Lancaster^ Hamilton^ and others — 
however useful to some classes of the people — have 
not been made generally applicable. 

The first step^ it would appear^ towards the re- 
modelling of the system now pursued^ would be 
the sanction of the new principle^ or at least its 
new application, as shown in the education and 
life of Silvio Pellico. The whole scope of his 
youthful as well as more matured tuition seems 
to have been regulated by the objects held in 
view 3 by the combined cultivation of the specu- 
lative and the practical, of the intellectual and 
moral, in the entire range of the mental fticulties. 
Thus the former were not precociously brought 
into display, as we too often see, at the expense 
of the latter, which are more slow in their opera- 
tions, and more gradually developed. By avoid- 
ing an exclusive cultivation of the intellectual 
faculties, not only the moral but the practical 
powers of the mind, in forming habits of patient 
investigation, perseverance, and physical applica- 
tion, in all their respective details, were called 



XVllI LIFE OF 

into action. Tlio power of volition was thus 
snpportcd, the *svv'di dcsideratuin in all plans of 
education, by the strength of corresponding 
eHorts ; and the result, a vigour, harmony, and 
entireness of character, rarely to be found in the 
disciples of the existing system. Weakness, 
inconsistency, extravagance, with indolence and 
dissipation of mind or habits, were thus ecpially 
avoided. Cultivaticm of mind and moral senti- 
ment are both comparatively easy of attainment ; 
but by this process the power was also conferred 
of acting, in unison witli the intellectual facul- 
ties, upon the will. In proportion as this right 
use and direction of the intellect is acquired, in 
the practical sense, in effecting any gtM)d purpose, 
is the corresponding power in abstaining from what 
is \\ rong ; or, in other words, the power of self- 
control, forbearance, patience, and resignation. 

Such was the discipline of mind, derived from 
a just and equal developement of its faculties, 
uhicli enabled Silvio Pellico to survive the 
calamity often years of almost solitary imprison- 
ment. There is presented in this single fact the 
strongest proof of the value of the principle for 
which we would contend in all future systems of 
Cilueation ; the principle of uniting moral power 



SILVIO PELLICO. XIX 

and duty, as inculcated in every line of the fol- 
lowing Treatise, with the merely intellectual 
education. 

In common with not a few men of genius 
during their early years, Silvio was of extremely 
delicate constitution : one illness succeeded to 
another^ and the medical faculty pronounced it to 
be impossible he should survive to see his seventh 
year. But having reached this, they declared it 
was but the first septennial stage, he would never 
get over the second ; and at fourteen (much the 
same thing) he would be no more. It came, and 
Silvio was so insensible to professional etiquette 
as still to survive ; but, to increase the chances, 
the faculty took advantage of a few lustres, and 
maintained that at the very most he might go on as 
far as one-and-twenty, but not a year more. But 
though the third of these assertions shared the 
same fate, Silvio, as regarded his physical powers, 
had by no means an easy task to refute them. 
To the infinite tenderness and care of a mother 
he owed his prolonged existence. When the 
faculty had passed their septennial act, they left 
him in articulo mortis^ as they believed; bu^ 
while in extreme exhaustion, his admirable pa- 
rent, with a devotion rivalling any upon record, 



XX LIFE OF 

restored him by the milk from lior own breast, 
and may be said, indeed, again to have given 
him life. 

13unbtless to the same, or some sympathetic 
kind of bodily inrirmity, was to be attributed 
another psychological fact connected with the 
health of Pellico. Thongh occurring early in life, 
it is not unworthy (►f observation, as assisting in 
the fuller illustration of the nuitured mind and 
genius of the maU; not less extraordinary than the 
vicissitudes of his eventful life. In these early 
traits we trace the first germ of the social character; 
the son, the citizen, such as he afterwards became. 
It is clear from one of them that he viewed death 
not only with inditference but with desire, as the 
secpiel to him of a painful and cruel struggle, and 
in this philosophic spirit he was heard, in after 
life, to observe: — 

'' The pleasantest day of my life will be that on 
which I shall die/' 

The impression, again, made upon his mind by 
one of his companions, n(>t more than seven or eight 
years old, when he was labouring under severe pain, 
is not a little curious. Accosting him, in a tone 
of mystery — '' Silvio, my dear boy, do you think, 
if there were any God, he would let you suffer 



SILVIO pf:llico. xxi 

thus ?'' But when he saw the indignant surprise 
painted on the little patient's features, he was 
terrified, and declared that he vv^ould never utter 
such words again. 

During the intervals of these trying attacks, 
Silvio and his elder brother Luigi were attended 
by a priest of the name of IManavella^, to prepare 
them for the elementary course of studies on which 
they were about to enter at a public school. 
Among other things committed to memory were 
several scenes, and even whole plays, which were 
recited by liim and his brother, in the presence of 
their friends, mounted upon a press, which served 
them for a stage. 

These fragments of the buskined muse were 
chiefly the production of their father, Signor 
Onorato, who, besides being a pleasing lyric poet, 
had a peculiar ease and charm in depicting moral 
and dramatic sentiment. Nor do such early im- 
pressions, as regarded action and character^ appear 
to have been without considerable effect, for Luigi 
subsequently wrote several excellent comedies, and 
Silvio is, without dispute, the most eminent living 
dramatist of his country. If w^e consider that, 
before ten years of age, the young poet had 
attempted a tragedy from Ossian, we shall cease 



XXIl MFF. OF 

to feci surprise ; niid, in particular, wlien wo 
incut i(ni liis accjuaiiitance with Cesarotti, whose 
enthusiasm in tlie cause of INIr. INIacpherson led 
liini to invest his favourite Ossian with an Italian 
dress. 

Durini^: this early period, his father liad 
erected a silk factory at Pinerolo, whither he had 
resorted with his, entire family, except his aged 
father and mother, who continued to reside at 
Saluzzo. Thence he proceeded to Turin on a 
mission of government ; and he had befiire occu- 
pied some public situation in the post-office, but 
whether in Pinerolo or Saluzzo appears uncer- 
tain. IM. Delatour, in making allusion to this 
period of Silvio's life, mentions the celebrated 
prisoner known as the Iron IMask, and further 
observes : — 

*' I can well believe that, later on, during the 
long nights of Spielberg, as he often recurred 
to the image of his beloved childhood, the castle 
of Pignerol, with its mysterious prisoner, more 
than once rose before his imagination. Who could 
have predicted to him, as he sat listening on his 
mother's knee to the sad mysterious legend, that 
he also would, one day, be interred alive in the 
sulrterranean dungeons of a fortress, far from hi> 



SILVIO PELLICO. XXIU 

home — far from his country;, in the chill air, and 
under the ever gloomy and foggy aspect of a 
Moravian sky ? " 

" Yet, thus it was/' exclaims Maroncelli, 
'' and how often did we not indeed converse, when 
togetlier, respecting the wonderful Iron Mask." 

The childhood of Pellico seems to have been 
peculiarly subject to those physical affections^ 
arising from a remarkably delicate frame both of 
body and mind;, which may be termed ocular delu- 
sions rather than existing in the imagination, and 
are much more general than is usually supposed. 
After having experienced some sudden alarm, he 
was accustomed, towards the close of day, to be- 
hold a number of strange fantastic shapes running 
all around him, and even when lights were brought 
they only seemed to withdraw into the less lumi- 
nous parts and corners of the room. At first, he 
would make a great outcry, and try all means of 
avoiding this singular species of percecution, and 
on these occasions the good lady^, Nonna^ was in 
the habit of consoling him. '' And what were they 
like, my pretty Silvio; what sort of faces had they ?^' 
'^ Ah V replied the boy, '' they have got faces (so 
long) just like the Signora Nonna's." Perhaps 
this odd passage of Silvio's life may be, in some 



nicasuro, cl<';iro(l up ])\ oljsorving, that tlio hulv 
pos^essoil tlie mysterious l)U(»k of the Seven 
Trumpets ; ami it is prolnible that tlie eliild's 
im.igination, being excited by perusing its strange 
legends, may have assumed this form of evening 
dreaming. 

IMeanwliih^, the government of the repu])b*c was 
established, and the integrity of Signor Onorato, 
founded less on the laws of men and princes than 
the eternal rule of justice, had caused him to be 
pronounced one of the most honourable under 
kings_, and one of the best of men under the re- 
public. In fulfilment of the duty of a citizen, 
he made it a point of honour to be present at the 
public meetings, where his object uniformly was 
to contribute to the general good, by consulting, 
as far as reasonable^, that of individuals. 

Nor was this example of advantage only to his 
fellow citizens; his sons Luigi and Silvio were 
invariably his companions, thus early reaping the 
benefit of attending a school of public justice, — a 
school of practical moral sense, in addition to the 
mere theory ; and the same which they saw dis- 
played, upon a smaller scale, within, as well as 
beyond, the precincts of home. 

J3y many, this attendance of two young boys at 



SILVIO PELL ICO. 



public assemblies would be pronounced an idle 
waste of time : ^^ for w^hat/' they will saVj, *^ could 
children understand ? " They understood every 
thing that passed ; for among all the ' fond 
records' of that susceptible age, there is none so 
deeply engraved upon the memory of Silvio as the 
recollection of these scenes^ — the voices of the 
different persons^ the description of public affairs, 
and their very attitudes^ — all which he can 
exactly detail. 

We next meet with Silvio at Turin. He still 
continued his studies under Don Manavella, still 
recited plays with his younger brothers and 
sisters ; but^ no longer in the habit of mounting 
upon a press by way of stage^ he may here be said 
to have closed the period of his infancy. 

Among the young persons accustomed to bear 
a part in these recitations^, was a sweet interesting 
young girl, named Carlottina, who was cut off at 
I the early age of fourteen. Her unfolding loveli- 
ness, and sensibility of character, appear to have 
made no transient impression on Silvio's youn^ 
mind,— as, however romantic it may seern^ we 
are told that the image of his youthful love fre- 
quently visited the midnight couch of the captive 
of Spielberg, or gave a melancholy occupation to 
c 2 



XXVi I.IIK Ol 

the lioavy liuiirs aiul days of sail waking thoughts 
ami early recollections. 

From such traits, slight as tlicy appear, may 
we gather how a solitude, appalling as the dun- 
geons of Spielberg, can liave been supported by a 
mind early disciplined, and habituated to cherish, 
in common with its intellectual faculties, the finer 
moral sensibilities of our nature. Mad it, like 
too many in the race of intellectual pre-eminence, 
and especially of our own age and country, been 
dependent upon external circumstances, and ex- 
ternal excitement, — so productive of alternate 
states of extreme exertion and relaxation, of ani- 
mation, followed by despondency and gloom, — as 
injurious to the literary character as to that of our 
statesmen, — the mind of Silvio Pellico would 
never have sustained the severe ordeal it was 
destined to undergo. It was then the moral 
energies and resources which he had cultivTited 
threw their shield around him ; solitude to him 
was not that condition of perfect deprivation and 
horror it had proved to others ; delicate as he 
was in frame, his mind enabled him to withstand 
that terrific scourge of reason — utter solitude — 
and, by the aid of strong moral discipline, the 
Christian soldier came olf the victor. 



SILVIO PELLICO, XXVil 

Wholly deprived of home, of social joys, the 
glad voice and the sweet aspect of nature and 
society, the captive yet dwelt within that world 
of moral truth and beauty, of well-disciplined 
mind, filled with images of gentleness, and love, 
and quiet joy, which had been previously developed 
within him, and which now shone upon him like 
a new creation. 

A fact which farther shows the triumph of the 
principle sought here to be illustrated, and of 
such vital importance in the education of future 
generations, was the captive's own division of his 
time and studies. These he distinguished by 
terming a life of study, and a life of action; 
corresponding with the intellectual, and moral or 
practical use of the human faculties. First, his 
life of study was conducted by certain mechanical 
rules, distributing what is possible to be known 
into several classes, and these again into particular 
courses, the process of which served to revive 
what he had before known, and, in some in- 
stances, to add to his stock of knowledge. When 
confined in the same dungeon with his friend 
Maroncelli, he pursued the same plan ; and they 
thus acquired repositories, more or less abundant^ 
through which each took their separate courses of 



XXVin LIFE OF 

knowlt'djxi', ('xcej)t in casrs \\'ljerc the memory of 
one proved treacherous, and the other couhl aid 
him, or undertook to give instructions in a 
branch unknown to the other. One day, for 
instance, was devoted, according to this arrange- 
ment, to repetitions of history ; another to those 
of j)hilos()phy ; a third, to those of geography, 
chronologv^ mathematics, the fine arts ; and, in 
proportion as each acquired a proficiency, he spoke 
one day in French, another in German, a third in 
Latin, and a fourth in the English language. 

This^ whicli was considered only as contempla- 
tive or p assive study, was invariably completed 
by the active; which means, that the one who felt 
equal to the task collected and condensed his 
thoughts upon a given subject, directed his mind 
to the production of some work^ a process which 
at times, by dint of strong mental tension, as in 
the case of Newton extracting the square root 
in his own head, arrived at complete execution. 
No one, by this plan, need be destitute of a sub- 
ject for active study, in whatever degree of soli- 
tude or captivity he may happen to be — namely, 
Ihc sludij of hh)isclf] with ilic ohjcd of making 
himaelf heller ; a study wholly independent of 
varying creeds and sects, and one to which each 



SILVIO PELLICO. XXIX 

of the prisoners devoted himself by a philosophic 
vow, pronounced either on the day of their sen- 
tence or on the following. It is sufficiently curious 
and novel, being pronounced under such circum- 
stances, to give it in the words of IMaroncelli. 
It is to the following tenor: — ^"^ Calamity, not 
justice, hath stricken us ; let us show that it hath 
stricken men and not children. Every condition 
has its duties 3 and the first duty of the unhappy, 
be he captive or be he free, is to suffer with mag- 
nanimity; his second to draw wisdom from mis- 
fortune ; and the third to pardon. Already was 
written in our hearts — 

" ' II giusto, il ver, la liberta sospiro ! ' 
For justice, truth, and Uberty 1 sigh. 

^' Shall calamity have the effect of erasing words 
like these ? Rather let us subdue, and not be 
subdued by it. If any captive survive to see the 
light, let him be witness for the others here con- 
demned to perpetual darkness, and let our vow be 
fulfilled without reference to the inhumanity of 
those who oppress us. This shall only be allowed 
to act as an incentive to a higher degree of virtue ; 
we prepare ourselves to attain it, and to learn to 



\X\ Llh'K OF 

rejoice in the necessity imposed ujhhi us of iin- 
|)rovin<; our liearts and minds." 

It is for civilised Europe to decide whether 
characters capable of displaying resignation^ for- 
titude, and magnanimity, such as breathe in these 
resolutions, were supported by truth and justice, 
and in how far they could have merited the inflic- 
tion of the most fearful of human ills. Tliat 
cause must be indeed good and holy, and deeply 
imbued with the purest spirit of Christianity, 
wliich could not only enable them to survive a 
series of sufferings so prolonged, but to pardon 
their enemies, and meet the fury of tlieir per- 
secution with the language of conciliation and 
peace. By what spirit, on the other hand, their 
oppressors were actuated — how much in accord- 
ance with the precepts and injunctions of tlieir 
Divine IMaster, a master by whom the motives 
and actions of princes must one day be weighed — 
we shall not, however we deplore it, stop to 
inquire. 

To pursue the illustration of the great, vital 
principles of education* in the mind and con- 



* While I w rite, I liave the satisfiuiiuii to Icani diat a 
-nin ui money luib been voted by the British legijslature 



SILVIO PELLICO. XXXI 

duct of Silvio Pellico^ as shown in his oAvn 
interesting narrative^ and the additions of his 
friend, in preference to hurrying over the mere 
incidents of his life^ I shall farther describe the 
plan he adopted while in captivity. 

After long solitary confinement^ he was per- 
mitted, as a last resource in sickness, the compa- 
nionship of his friend Maroncelli. The course they 



in aid of the funds to establish national schools for the gene- 
ral instruction of the people. I feel it my duty not to per- 
mit the present humble effort to recommend the introduc- 
tion of a principle too little acted upon, to pass through 
the press, without inviting the attention of the leading 
men who are interested in their establishment, to the im- 
perative nece ssif^/ of uniting with knowledge not only a 
course of religious and moral instruction, but a practical 
inculcation of the social and national duties, of the duties 
of social beings, of private citizens, and ^' of men," 
such as are illustrated in the life and writings of the 
excellent Pellico. Without some ulterior objects of a 
social and national character like this, the mere diffusion 
of knowledge, the establishment of compulsory schools, 
on the Prussian or any other existing system, will be found 
inadequate to meet the wants of a rapidly increasing 
people, or the aspirations of the spirit of free inquiry, 
j which steadily press upon exclusive privileges like some 
mighty torrent : — 

'* Labitur et labetur cum omni volubile aevum." Hor. 



XXXll LIFE OF 

pursiiotl on comi)lrtiii«^ tlioir studios, which thcN 
term active and passive, was to take a chronological 
review of the events of their past lives; and in 
these successive examinations, to mark wliat was 
good and \\liat contrarv to good, in order to 
strengthen their resolves in favour of all which 
is worthy, and their detestation of what is mean 
or ignoble. To love mankind, to abhor the 
wickedness of which they are guilty, while 
they forgave tlie ludlifaclors, was the sum of their 
christian doctrine. Bv this noble and manly 
conduct, the martyrs of christian freedom were 
not merely enabled to recal to mind the blissful 
hours of youth, from the depths of their imperial 
dungeon; they became children again in the moral 
vigour of their hearts — so long cultivated, — as 
well as in their imaginative faculty ; approaching 
nearer perhaps, in their exterior desolation, to 
the state of mind meant to be conveyed in the 
divine precept — ^' Unless ye be as a little child ye 
shall not enter the kingdom of heaven" — than 
any perfection of the heart and affections ytt 
placed upon human record. If we for a moment 
question the probability of this moral action and 
support, let us reHect on the well-known and 
tried ]M)wer of solitarv incarceration over the most 



SILVIO PELLICO. XXXm 

abandoned and hardest of hearts^ — inaccessible to 
all other means of remorse or amendment; and 
which renders it an engine of such immense moral 
power in the hands of justice tempered with mercy. 

It was thus Silvio Pellico adorned the desolation 
of life in the caverns of Spielberg with a beauty, 
and ennobled it with a glory, of mind, which in 
the future annals of his race and of his country 
will form one of those bright spots in the long 
waste of history,— the memory of which serves 
to redeem the character of man in his own 
eyes. The study, therefore, which he terms 
the life of action, consisted not merely in a 
chain of recollections, of a glad, a sorrowful, or a 
mingled hue, but in a record of charitable deeds 
and feelings which bound him closer to humanity; 
a process which few minds less morally and prac- 
tically prepared for such a course of self-examina- 
tion would have had strength to impose upon 
themselves^. 

To recur to his early life. The twin sister of 
Silvio, named Rosina, possessed of surpassing 
beauty, and linked with him also by ties of conge- 
nial mind, was on the eve of marriage with a 

* Maroncelli. 

d 



XXXIV LIFK OF 

distant rc'latiw rositliiig at Lyons. She was ac- 
companied l)\ licr niotlier and her favourite brother 
into France ; and sucli was the pleasure which thr 
latter derived from her society, and that of their 
new relatives and friends, that he continued to 
reside there after the return of their mother into 
Italy. Almost wholly absorbed in his studies, 
during a space of four years, he appeared, in some 
measure, to have lost the attachment he before fell 
for his native land, wlien a trivial incident served 
to revive it in all its youthful freshness and viva- 
city. A poem of Foscolo's — called ^' I Sepolcri,'' 
the Tombs — appeared in the year 1806, and was 
read by Silvio with a degree of impassioned pa- 
triotism — an indescribable love of home — strongly 
contrasting with his late forgetfulness and repose, 
and acting upon him with all the force of an 
appeal to his earliest associations and pursuits. 
By extending his usual studies, and more fre- 
quently mingling in the world, he sought to subdue 
the strength of these impressions ; but he seemed 
to hear the accents of a strange land on every 
lip — to read the Tombs of Italy in the title of 
every book. The skies of France no longer wore 
the same transparent hue — the deep brilliant as- 
pect of Italy still haunted him, sleeping or 



SILVIO FELLICO. XXXV 

waking, like a dream. Plunged in frequent 
reverie, his friends vainly sought the cause of a 
depression so unusual with him ; till at length he 
confessed that some poet on the other side of the 
Alps had given him the mal du pays, '' Who 
is he?" was the inquiry, ^'^ what is his name?" 
and would he recite them a few of these magic 
verses. Pellico^ in a deep fervent tone^ gave an 
improvised version of some exalted passages — and 
with such effect, that the generous gioAv of his 
feelings touched with electric force the sympathies 
of his auditors*. 

In a few days afterwards he quitted France 
for his native country. His family were then at 
Milan, — his father acting as chief of the division 
under the minister of war, and his brother Luigi 
as secretary to the Marquis Caprara di Bologna, 
grand equerry of the kingdom of Italy. It is 
here w^e enter upon two separate portions of the 
life of Pellico — in his extensive reading and 
researches on the subject of religion, and that 
discipline in his general studies, some results of 
Avhich we have given, and which so well prepared 
him to write upon the ^^ Duties of JVIen." At Milan 

* M. De k Tour. 



\XXV1 LIFK OF 

lir was called to the protVssor.sliip of the French 
lan«^iia<^e at a period w luii it merited the title of 
the Athens of Italy — when science and letters 
vied with each other, and Italy assnmed the aspect 
of a i^reat re<j,enerating ])eople nnder the wing of 
the imperial eagle* (a hrief dream of liberty), 
again to be plunged into the barbarism and 
bonda<re of ai^es. 

In the society of Monti and Foscolo, and the 
celebrated men of various nations, the poetical 
genius of Pellico, no less than his intellectual 
faculties, became rapidly matured. He was 
favourably received, and, with further acquaint- 
ance, won upon all parties. Indeed his 
enjoying the confidence of two characters like 
Monti and Foscolo — then at variance — speaks 
highly for him both as regards talent and ami- 
ableness of dispositi'Mi. The one all fire, (»f 
iron will, the fanatic of freedom, eager and 
quick in quarrel, offered much to extort the 
admiration, and to call forth the sympathy of a 
U'ind like Pellico's. lie listened to his dreams 
of ambition ; his love of glory ; his restless vary- 

* Duriiinr ilio early days of Italy's liberation by Najjolcon 
iVoiii the Austrian voke. 



SILVIO PELLICO. XXXVll 

ing moods ; his self- consuming bitterness and 
anguish of spirit ; his uneasy doubts and faith : 
beholding in him^ and in all his actions^ '^ the 
strange eccentric path of some mighty comet." 
But in Monti he saw the supple and richly-stored 
intellect — insinuating, ambitiouS;, and seeking po- 
pularity at almost any price. When the latter ex- 
plained to him the various processes of his poetical 
labour Sj and the secret acquisition of the varied 
powers of language he possessed, Pellico could not 
restrain the expression of his admiration; but^, 
with a knowledge of these details^ and the volu- 
minous specimens of his poetical exercises, 
vanished much of the enchantment created by 
the resounding flow and grandeur of his muse. 
Ippolito Pindemonte and Breme were, among 
other of his contemporaries, objects of his highest 
regard. The following is a trait of Pellico's 
frankness of mind : — 

Monti, one day, meeting Pellico at the Cafe 
Verri, addressed him on the subject of his quarrel 
with Foscolo. — '^ Well," he said, '' will you 
longer deny Ugo's enmity and malice } Ungrate- 
ful as he is ! Who brought him into notice ? The 
Sepolcri would have remained unknown to this 
day. He owes his honours to me ; and by a single 
d 2 



XXXVlll I.IFI OF 

word, I could consign thciii to ignominy and 
neglect." 

*' There, dear ^Nlonti," replied Silvio, *' you 
are wrong. Vou brought the poem into high 
esteem, to be sure; and tliis does honour to your 
criticism, which, when obeying the impulses of 
your heart, always leads you to the noblest things. 
But imagine not you could consign such a poem 
to contempt ; you deceive yourself : nor could you, 
if you would, destroy your own work. They 
whose eyes you have opened, now partake the 
light, and can judge of colours as well as yourself. 
Before that, indeed, you might have treated them 
to tlie sound of the trumpet, and then have assured 
them that it was the colour of scarlet ; but this is 
now out of your power. In regard to his being 
your enemy and calumniator, I know the con- 
trary ; I kn()w he is only inimical to your defa- 
mers — and here, on this very spot, in the place you 
sit, he gave a smart box on the ear to one who, 
wishing to flatter him^ spoke disrespectfully of 
you " 

Monti struck In's forehead, at the same time 
exclaiming against the mean and malignant spirit 
of those who, having themselves no hopes, no 



SILVIO PELLICO. XXXIX 

nobler aims in literature, sought to keep them at 
enmity^ in order to obtain the crurnbs that fell 
from their table. '^ Had we known how to con- 
tinue friends/' he added, ^^ we should not need to 
support that hungry tribe of sycophants." 

Meanwhile Pellico was deeply engaged in his 
literary labours, and he was now invited by Monti 
to undertake, in conjunction with him, a complete 
translation of Byron, — an invitation which, for 
numerous reasons, the younger poet conceived it 
proper to decline. Monti expressed himself hurt 
at his refusal, and still more at his not having 
consulted with him previous to the publication of 
his Francesca da Rimini, and his Eufemio ; but 
Silvio as frankly explained to him the solid and 
conclusive reasons which actuated him. With 
Foscolo, however, it appears he was more com- 
municative, and on completing his tragedy of 
Francesca, he submitted it to his perusal. The 
answer Silvio received next day was:— '^^ Listen 
to me ; throw your Francesca into the fire. Why 
should we rake up from the Inferno the ghosts 

which Dante himself has d d ? It would 

frighten people who are alive. Throw it into the 
fire, I say, and bring me something else." Silvio 
accordingly brought him a juvenile drama, called 



I.IFK OF 



Laodicca, " Ah, now," said Foscolo, *' this is good ; 
you"get along licre ! " 

The young dramatist, however, impelled by that 
inward sense ^\'hich teaelies every artist what is 
beautiful in his own productions, even when con- 
demned by the rules of scliools, or by the learned, 
preserved his Franccsca carefully and burned, or, 
at all events suppressed, his Laodicea. 

About a year subsequently, a distinguished 
actress^ with whom Pellico had been much struck 
when young, re-appeared at IMilan. Pellico and 
liis friend Bremc recognised her, and the con- 
demned Franccsca was taken from its dusty 
corner in the poet's desk. The character Wiis 
allotted to the now applauded IMarchionni ; she 
played it ; it was repeated at Naples, at Florence 
— upon all the Italian boards aiid with still 
increasing success. 

The Neapolitan government had fallen, and 
Silvio's familv returned to Turin, whither the 
father had been called to direct one of the sessions 
of the war minister. Pellico remained alone at 
Milan, the guest of Count Briche, and aftenvards 
became the tutor of his son. He next went to 
reside with Count Porro, \vith the same views of 
directini; the education of his two sons. Here 



8JJ.VIO PELL I CO. xli 

his former pupilj, a fine youtlij the son of 
Count Bridie^ came one day to see him. Pel- 
lico^ though engaged with company at the 
moment^ observed an air of deep melancholy 
about his youthful friend, who approaching 
asked him to lend him some particular book. 
" You will find it in the library, and can take 
it/' was Pellico's answer. '* Is there anything 
else you wish to say to me ?*' '^ Nothing else^** 
was the reply ; and the young man instantly set 
out for his father s seat at Loreto, asked for his 
fowling-piece, as if going out in pursuit of game, 
and shot himself. Pellico and his father hastened 
to the spot, and found he was no more. This 
event for some time afterwards threw a gloom over 
the spirits of Pellico, as well as the young man's 
other friends, by whom he had been long and 
deservedly esteemed. 

About the year 1815, Silvio Pellico accom- 
panied his friend Breme to Milan, where the 
latter intended to bring out a drama, in which 
the chief part was confided to the distinguished 
actress Marchionni. On their arrival, they found 
that the celebrated physician Kasori, Colonel 
Gasparinetti, and some other of their friends, 
were prisoners in the fortress of Mantua, During 



xlii LIFK OF 

jHK)r Riisori's captivity, Pellico had supplied the 
place of a father, as well as of an instructor, to 
his daughter ; and his first object was to apply 
for instant admittance into the place to give him 
tidings of his child. Count Arrivabene inter- 
ested himself greatly to obtain this favour, as it 
was considered, and it was arranged that Silvio 
must previously hold an audience with the 
governor, a rigid disciplinarian, but not of an 
unfeeling heart. 

*' And what do you want with Doctor Rusori ?" 
was the abrupt inquiry of the German. 

** I wish to consult him," replied Pellico. 

" And what is the matter with you r " 

*^ A complaint of the chest.' 

** The chest! the chest! where?" inquired 
the old soldier, at the same time laving his hand 
uj>on Pellico's breast. — '^ This complaint, I find, 
is a complaint of the heart ; friendship, sheer 
friendship ; " and his voice trembled with emo- 
tion, spite of the rough tone in which he spoke. 
The old commander died soon after ; and it must 
liave been some relief to his feelings, under the 
stern duties imposed upon him, to reflect that he 
had done \\ hat u as in his j>ower to diminish the 
sorrows of two of his fellow-creatures. 



SILVIO PELLico. xliii 

Peliico was admitted to see and converse with 
his friend, little perhaps imagining, at that 
moment, that he should one day experience a fate 
far more severe and terrible in those subterranean 
caverns where not a friend or relative would he 
permitted to visit him. But if he met with the 
good humane Schiller for a gaoler, if he made 
converts to humanity, caused tears to flow from 
the eyes of those who fulfilled with loathing the 
harsh dictates of their imperial masters, such 
alleviations of the captive's lot, slight as to us 
they may appear, were something, — they were well 
deserved by one who, enjoying the ease and ele- 
gancies of life, first hastened to soothe the anxie- 
ties of a bereaved and captive father, ere joining 
in the festivities of a splendid city. 

On his return to Milan, he again resided at 
the house of his friend. Count Porro, with whom 
he lived on terms of the strictest intimacy, and 
where he met the most distinguished men, both 
natives and foreigners, of his time. It was there 
he became acquainted with Madame de Stael and 
Schlegel, then at the head of the critical writers 
of their respective countries ; it was there he first 
saw Lord Byron, Mr. (now Lord) Brougham, 
Thorwaldsen, Davis, with numbers of enlight- 
ened travellers of various countries. The man- 



xiiv Lii-fc: OF 

sion of Count Purro, indeed, was long the 
favourite resort of nuii of all tastes and pursuits ; 
or, in tlie words of Maroncelli, it was here that 
Dante aud Shakspeare, Petrarch and Schiller, 
the artist and the citizen, poetry and science, met 
and ishook hands, as in a temple sacred to the 
muses. 

Pellico had, shortly before, translated the Man- 
fred of Byron. The latter requested to see the 
manuscript of his drama of Francesca, which had 
not then publicly appeared. Two days after his 
Lordship received it, he himself returned it into 
Pellico's hands, observing, '' You Avon't be angry 
if I have translated it .^ " He had, in fact, trans- 
ferred it into English verse ; and he then added, 
'• You ought to have translated the Manfred into 
verse." Pellico disputed this opinion, believing 
that in a language like the Italian in particular 
it could not be done without adding to, or taking 
away so much as very greatly to impair the effect 
of the original. In 1819, Lodovico Breme put 
forth an edition of the Francesca, with which he 
united the above-mentioned translation of Lord 
Byron's 3Ianfred. 

In the follow ing ytar Pellico was desirous of 
publishing another of his tragedies, Eufemio da 
Messina ; but had to meet with numerous ob- 



SILVIO PELLICO. xlv 

stacles with regard to the censorship. While it was 
under discussion^ the sons of Count Porro, who 
had transcribed it^ gave it to their father^, in order 
that he might have it printed entire in some other 
of the states. This was secretly done ; and it 
was subsequently permitted to appear in this 
form at Milan, upon condition of its not being 
publicly represented. 

During the interval, however, Pellico con- 
templated an undertaking of a more extensive 
and important character, the admirable design and 
spirit of which, in the actual state of parties in 
Italy, have never hitherto been duly appreciated. 
He unfolded his views to his most distinguished 
and influential friends, and to those writers with 
whom he was on terms of intimacy, all of whom 
united in extolling them as adapted to the wants 
and wishes of the age. It was to establish a 
periodical work, to be entitled '^ The Conciliator," 
founded upon the most truly national and com- 
prehensive principles, whether as regarded litera^ 
ture, art, and science, or the social and moral 
improvement of the people by means of reconcil- 
ing the discordant elements of public feeling. 
The associated members had arranged to iiieet 
three times in the week at Count Porro's, where 
its chief founder likewise filled the office of secre- 

/ 



xlvi MFE OF 

larv, devoting liis Liitirc* energies and abilities to 
the nuiturity <>t these great and beneficial plans. 

At this periud a number of schools, already 
established by the Count in the different towns of 
Lombardy, and supported by his ample means, 
would seem to liave ])repared the soil for superior 
cultivation. Aided by Pellico, not only had he 
introduced many improvements in the system of 
education, but adopted several valuable scientific 
discoveries from other countries, of great public 
utilitv, entirely at his own expense. Ilis friend 
Confalonieri was despatched into England, and it 
was not long before the streets of his native city 
appeared lighted with gas. He built the Hrst 
steam-boat, which was intended to establish a 
communication betv/een Paris and Piedmont. 

But these and similar patriotic efforts had not 
exhausted the resources of Count Porro ; and, 
enterintr with ardour into the views entertained 
bv Pellico, the ^^ Conciliator " received the fiat of 
the high-minded and generous Count. Its object 
was twofold, and most admirable, embracing tli* 
true scope of national education, the union of the 
theoretical and practical, the intellectual and 
the moral improvement of the human mind. For 
til is, two simultaneous operations were necessary 



SILVIO PELLICO. Xlvii 

one the work of the " Conciliator" through the 
restricted medium of the press— another beyond 
its operation. The one was the recorded views^ 
the other the social and oral exertions of the con- 
ciliators themselves^ as masters of the pacificating 
doctrine^ in accordance with which it was in- 
tended to educate, or, at all events, to prepare a 
new generation of writers. This, forming the 
most important and characteristic object of the 
undertaking, could only be promoted by some one 
or other of the associated body of conciliators dis- 
seminating the spirit of the system by means of 
oral communication within the respective circles 
in which they moved. Connected with th^ 
'^ Conciliator " were other works, forming 
branches of the same system, and written with 
the same view of conciliating literary rivalries, 
as regards the romantic, the classical, the dramatic, 
and the different views of style and criticism, 
peculiar to different states : rivalries which had 
been suffered to run into the bitterest hostility 
injurious to the social and national as well as the 
literary character of Italy. 

In the ennobling of the literary, no less than 
the social and national spirit, by progressive intel- 
lectual and moral discipline, the luminous mind 



XlVllI LIFK OF 

of Pc'llico saw tlic future regeneratiou of his 
countrynieii. The prineipal towns of Italy would 
have been eager to combine in an undertaking to 
promote the highest and holiest interests of man, 
an education founded upon genuine christian aud 
moral principles ; and, in fact, each, it is stated, 
sent its representative to give its adherence to 
this congress of poets and philosophers, the 
first among the conciliators of their race. The 
public utility of such an undertaking soon be- 
came apparent in its fruits, in a growing spirit 
of conciliation, and the union of knowledge and 
moral jwwer for the real enlightenment of the 
people. We should naturally infer, from the 
principles just enumerated, that every govern- 
ment entitled to the name of government, 
would have found its policy in the encouragts 
ment of the views of christian conciliators as 
opposed to those of the demagogues, the revo- 
lutionists, and the reckless unbelievers of the age ; 
but it would appear from some recent acts of 
European governments as if they were as much 
startled by the light of the gospel, as much alarmed 
at the truth which shall make man free, — and 
as much opposed to genuine Christianity in its 
results, as tlie disciples of the ^''oltaire school — 



SILVIO PELLICO. Xlix 

the most violent of anarchists and sceptics them- 
selves. If the power of knowledge might with 
safety have been intrusted into the hands of any 
people, it was the people of modern Italy ; and 
when based on the system of conciliation, of moral 
dignity, and discipline of the faculties, as opposed 
to violence and anarchy, we are doubly at a loss to 
perceive any just or rational grounds for its sup- 
pression, and for the bitter persecution which laid 
the heads of its noblest promoters in the dust. 
Had the system of education attempted to be 
introduced been far in advance of the moral 
spirit and capacity of the people ; had it consisted 
in placing at their command an engine of 
mighty power they knew not how to direct — 
in the diffusion of knowledge, which may make 
a discontented and rapidly increasing popula- 
tion wise, but not wise unto salvation — render 
them keenly sensible of their condition, without 
imparting moral courage and christian consolation 
to support them under it — the jealousy of any 
government might justly be excited. Had Pellico 
and his illustrious friends not connected their con- 
ciliatory doctrines with popular education, founded 
on a solid religious basis, and by the previous 
establishment of moral and elementary schools — 
/2 



1 Ml'fc: OF 

had tlicv souiilit to (litKiiso tliL' lljrlit of iialuii 
without the lii::ht of rcvehitioii — science without 
religion — reason and truth without the moral 
vigour and judgment to wield them, thus creating 
a fertile source of evil in the fermentation of tin 
intellectual elements without the restraining force 
of religious and moral discipline — impelling the 
j)eople to employ their knowledge in crude mis- 
directed combinations^ in a restless and mor])i(l 
activity to equal tliose above them^ whom they 
believe they equal in point of intellect ; — letting 
loose, in short, a fearful power w^hen unregulated 
by moral cultivation and religious discipline, — 
the conductors of the conciliatory system need nut 
have felt astonished at the failure of their plans. 

If they had, moreover, consisted of men pant- 
ing for popular applause, more eager in the pur- 
suit of (general fame than wij^e and calculating in 
promoting the general good, and poured a flood 
of universal light and knowledge — a sudden w ide- 
spread blaze of intellect, which clearly showed 
the secret springs and bearings of social and 
political institutions, with a growing sense of 
gigantic power not actuated by a redeeminir 
strength and moral discipline, to be derived only 
from religious education , had the conciliators of 



SILVIO PELLICO. li 

Italy thus stolen the Promethean fire and cast 
it like a brand among an excited and ill disci- 
plined people — by wliat nam^e would an Austrian 
government have characterised their proceedings ? 
In what other terms should the founders of such 
a system as this^ of which the operations, with- 
out the regenerating discipline and restraining 
power of religion, confer only a dark and fearful 
power, aiming at that bad eminence which com- 
mands the realms of ^' Anarch and old Night/' 
be truly designated, though arrayed in all the 
splendour of gigantic and resistless intellect, 
but as a comet of the moral world — the golden 
statue with the feet of clay ? 

Many were the fearful preludes of the storm 
which burst upon the head of the devoted con- 
ciliators, and Count Porro was one of the few who 
had early enough the precaution to make his 
escape. In dungeons and upon the scaffold they 
were condemned to expiate the crime of loving their 
country ; for keeping in view the divine precepts 
of cultivating peace and goodwill towards men, 
and teaching them to walk humbly before their 
Gode The sensation produced by the total sup- 
pression of this high, intellectual school, at Milan, 
with all its rich promise of regenerating the 



lii LIFE OF 

popular niiiul and directing popular opinion, is 
described as affecting and sombre in the extreme ; 
as if ominous of the more terrific sufferings which 
speedily followed. Each of its associated mem- 
bers hastened home to his solitary studies, lialf 
despairing of the cause of their country and of 
mankind. Tlie young and beautiful spirit of 
Italy, bright and glad as in the days of her mer- 
chant princes, seemed to have been cradled once 
more in the lofty intellect and pure moral worth 
of men who had united in the holiest bonds of 
christian brotherhood, to promote the moral wel- 
fare and civilisation of a future people. How dark 
a stain upon humanity ! how terrific that scourge 
of barbarism and brute power, which in the nine- 
teenth century can seek its policy in destroying 
a system like this, and hunting down its bene- 
factors as if they were wild beasts, hostile to the 
safety of mankind ! On the fatal termination of 
the Neapolitan revolution, the whole of Lombardy 
felt the shock, and fell under a yet heavier yoke. 
Arrests followed each other in rapid succession ; 
the proclamations of Austria against associations 
came less like a warning than a sudden grasping 
of her victims ; and it was then that the ranks of 
the conciliators first began to be rapidly thinned- 



SILVIO PELLICO. liii 

Pellico's admirable friend^ the Marquis Breme^ 
was spared the horror of witnessing or feeling the 
sufferings prepared for his noble countrymen. 
Our author had just received tidings that he was 
then dying at Turin. He instantly set out to 
join his beloved friend ; he rallied after Pellico's 
arrival, who continued with him during the space 
of a month. At length on appearing better than 
usual^ Silvio one day returned to Milan^ and 
almost immediately afterwards he heard that 
Breme was no more. On the second of September 
following, he sailed from Pavia in a steam-boat 
to visit Venice ; but returning in a short time 
once more to Milan, he hastened to the house of 
his admirable friend, Pietro Maroncelli ^'. Upon 
inquiry, the answer was that he had been arrested. 
Upon this, Pellico, who had promised Count 
Porro to attend to some of his family affairs, set 
out for his country seat of Balbianino, on the Lake 

* The same to whom the world is indebted for the in- 
teresting " Additions" to Pellico's Memoirs, from which 
these incidents of the author's life have been gathered. 
The translator has to confess his obligations also to an * 
Italian Life prefixed to a beautiful edition of Pellico's 
Memoirs, embodying the interesting *' Additions," in one 
volume, very tastefully got up, with the portrait and a 
vignette. Published by Mr. Rolandi, Berner's-street. 



Hv MIE OF 

of Como ; ami after transact iiijj: the necessary 
business, lie went hack w itli the same quiet 
undisturbed niirul to Mihui. Scarcely had he 
re-entered the city, when some one advancing 
close to him, whispered in his ear, '^ The police 
are after you ! " ^' They know where I am to be 
found/' ^vas the answer ; '^ J am going to wait 
for them." He went, and they were in readiness 
for him ! His papers, his poems, tragedies, ro- 
mances, correspondence — were all seized ; and he 
was requested to follow his inquisitors to the 
station, or police prisons of Santa iMarghereta. 
Like the footsteps into the lion's den, Jiulla 
rclrorsum, he never retraced his way ; but was 
hurried from dungeon to dungeon, under every 
variety of physical and moral suffering, until he 
found himself in the subterranean caverns (sen- 
tenced to iifteen years' close confinement) of the 
castle of Spielberg. 

'^ But before this blow fell upon him," says liis 
French biographer, " Providence, as if to sustain 
him under so great a calamity, had raised hini 
up a friend eager to console him : a young man 
of Forli, in the printing establishment of Bel- 
loni, named Pietro BlaronccUi, gifted with a f\n(i 
taste both f(a poetry and music. I feel indeed 



SILVIO PELLICO. Iv 

deeply affected as I trace for tlie first time the 
name of him who underwent such unheard-of 
sufferings by the side of Silvio Pellico ; it is to 
him I am indebted for the chief part of the facts 
interweaved into this narrative. He went through 
the whole of his pathetic recital without having 
said a single word of himself; without alluding to 
the time and place where they had first met — 
how they had become such perfect brothers^ and 
religiously preserved their affection unabated 
through the terrific scenes they had to encounter ; 
and when I reminded him of this omission, he 
looked at me with astonishment, and with an 
expression which conveyed in the most delicate 
manner, that in speaking of his friend he supposed 
he had said every thing which referred to him- 
self. They met for the first time at the house of 
the celebrated actress Marchionni, with whose 
name are connected the first poetical laurels of Sil- 
vio Pellico. A warm discussion on some system 
of music brought them closer to each other ; their 
friendship sprung almost from a quarrel, but one 
of those fine quarrels of art which unfold the 
souls of nature's nobles to each other. When 
Maroncelli rose to depart, Pellico followed him ; 
they walked together some way, and, ere they 



Ivi MFK OF 

separated, unaltered vows of friendship had been 
accepted and returned It looked as if, having 
some presentinicMit of the destiny awaiting them, 
they felt that instinctive want of securing each 
for the other to bear up against the evil days 
which were at hand. They loved one another 
with a sudden and generous impulse, in order 
the better to be prepared to suffer together wlien 
their hour was come*." 

Pietro Maroncelli had been arrested on the Jth 
of October, 1820, just six days before his friend. 
From this last date commences the autobiography, 
entitled^ *' INIy Ten Years' Imprisonment," by Pei- 
lico, already translated into most of the European 
languages, and into English, among the rest, by 
the writer of the present narrative. It would in 
so far be a vain repetition to do more than refer to 
*^My Ten Years' Imprisonment," for a most 
interesting sequel of this hasty account. Its ob- 
ject, as connected with The Duties of Men, which 
I am anxious it should tend to enforce, is rather 
to exhibit the education and the mind of Pellico, 



• M. Delatour ; see also *^ Le Addizioni,** in a new edition 
1a> MiePregioni, witli llie very -.Mc \AU\ :iliv:id\ alluded to. 



SILVIO FELLICO. IvH 

as formed upon that system of moral discipline 
combined with mere knowledge^ — a system to 
which he subsequently devoted all his energies^, 
and to which he had so nearly fallen a martyr for 
the sake of conferring it upon his country. 

The same principle^ it will readily be perceived, 
has dictated every line of the following admirable 
little work, which contains the substance of 
genuine Christianity, practical education, and a 
simplicity and pathos in its appeals which render 
it a powerful coadjutor in the great task of giving 
a new heart, and creating a right spirit in man. 

Silvio Pellico appears to have been always actu- 
ated by the same sentiments of love of family, 
love of country, and love of humanity. How they 
took root we have seen while examining the germs 
of his infant character, which it was apparent 
would one day bear noble fruits. These generous 
principles, indeed, became the religion of his pri- 
vate and public life. The whole of them resolve 
I themselves into one source of truth and good, as 
they all spring from religion and from God^. When 
j cut off from the exercise of these holy charities, 
* in sad captivity, the hand of death and deep 
sorrow lay heavy upon him ; but once restored to 



* Maroncelli. 



Iviii MFE OF 

tlicir iKilural and beneficial employment, they 
hccaiiie tlio inspiring sung of the free exulting 
poet. 

But even in captivity he had found room for their 
display ; he made friends, and converts to good- 
ness and to trutl], of all \vith whom he met, from 
the harsh gaoler and his attendants to the young 
unformed minds of childhood — the deaf and the 
dumb ; passing through an ordeal of prison disci- 
pline which must become memorable in the annals 
of mind. It was this which conferred upon him 
the best of titles to estimate and to recommend, 
from the great human school of experience and 
adversity, the value of the simple ** Duties of 
Men *:' 



* I cannot refrain from adding one beautiful illuatration of 
devoted duty and affection in the instance of the Countess 
Confalonieri. Tlie moment she heard that the Count was con- 
demned to death, ?lic flew to Vienna, but the courier had al- 
ready set out with the fatal mandate. It was midnight ; but 
lier agonies of mind pleaded for instant admission to the 
Empress. The same passionate despair which won the attend- 
ants, wrought its effect on their royal mistress; she hastened 
that moment to the Emperor, and having succeeded, returned 
to the unhappy lady with a commutation of the sentence; her 
husband's life was spared. But tiic death-warrant was on it 
way ; — could she overtake the courier ? Throwing herself into 
a conveyance, an<l paying four times the amount for relays of 
liorses, she never, it is stated, stopped or tasted food till she 



SILVIO PELLICO. lix 

reached the city of Milan. The Count was preparing to be led 
to the scaffold; but she was in time,— she had saved him- 
During her painful journey, she had rested her throbbing brow 
upon a small pillow, which she bathed with her tears, — in the 
conflict of mingled terror and hope ; for all might be over- 
This interesting memorial of conjugal tenderness and truth in 
so fearful a moment, was sent by his judges to the Count, to 
show theu' sense of his wife's admirable conduct. He brought 
it with him to the dungeons of Speilberg ; it was his sole con- 
solation ; his inseparable companion by day and by night. A 
long succession of governors and superintendents had all re- 
spected its possession, and the noble devotedness of heart which 
gave it to him. In an evil hour, Count Von Vogel came; said 
that it was irregulur^ and deprived the captive Count of this last 
left source of consolation. 







,./ x-^> 



^^trrc^f^ 



c^Ceyiu^i 



TO THE READER. 



The following Discourse was addressed to 
an individual; but I publish it in the hope of 
its being useful to young persons in general. 
It is not a scientific treatise ; it contains no 
profound investigations into the nature of 
our human duties. That man is under an 
obligation to be honest and religious, appears 
to me to require no proof from force or in- 
genuity of argument. He who finds no such 
proof in his own conscience, will in vain 
seek for it in a book. I have here confined 
myself to a simple enumeration of the 



TO Tin: UEAUEIl. 

positive duties which man lias to encounter 
in liis })assage through life; I invite his 
attention to them ; I ask him to pursue 
them with a noble constancy of mind. 



DUTIES OF MEN. 

JN A SERIES OF SUBJECTS, ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG 
FRIEND. 



SECTION I. 

ON THE NECESSITY AND VALUE OF DUTY. 

It is impossible for the human mind to disen- 
gage itself from the idea of duty ;— impossible 
for it not to feel and acknowledge the immense 
importance of such an idea. The sense of duty is 
irradicably attached to our very being ; conscience 
warns us of its existence from the earliest dawn 
of reason, and it invariably grows with our 
growth as the reasoning powers expand. Every 
thing, without and around us^ equally informs us 
of this truth, because every thing is governed by 



2 SILVIO PELLICO. 

one liarniniiious aiul eternal law; — everything in 
unison has a destination to express the wisdom, 
and to effect the will of that Being who is the 
cause and the end of all things. 

It follows that man, also, has a destination, — 
a nature of his own. In conformity with this 
nature, it is necessary that he be that which he 
ought to be, or he is not esteemed by his kind, — 
he is not esteemed by himself; — he is not happy. 
Yet it is his nature to aspire to happiness ; — to 
understand and to prove that he cannot attain it 
except by being virtuous ; — in other words, being 
that which his welfare, in unison with the system 
of the universe, — with the designs of God, demand 
that he should be. 

If, in the hour of passion, we are tempted to 
call that our good which is opposedto the well- 
being of another, and to universal order, we are 
still unable to persuade ourselves that it is so ; 
for conscience denies the assertion. When the 
passion ceases, the retrospect of what has injured the 
well-being of another, and disturbed general order, 
invariably excites a feeling of remorse and liorror. 
The fulfilment of duty, then, is so far necessary 
to our welfare, that even the pains of death, which 
are thou^lit the most imminent of human evils. 



THE LOVE OF TRUTH. 



3 



assume the aspect of a triumph in the mind of the 
truly noble, who know how to suffer and to die 
in the effort to save their neighbour^, or to conform 
to the adorable designs of the Omnipotent. 

In man^ therefore, becoming that which he 
ought to be consists at once the definition of 
duty and that of happiness. Religion proclaims 
this truth sublimely^, when it says^, that he is 
made in the image of God. His duty and his 
happiness consist in his degree of likeness to that 
Image; — in not desiring to be other than like ; but 
to be good^ because God is good^ and has given to 
him the glorious capacity of elevating his soul to 
all the virtues^, and to become^ by so doing, even 
one with Himself. Is not here a heavenly desti- 
nation worth suffering for, and struggling through 
severer difficulties than a brief mortal life can 
array against us ? 



SECTION II. 

ON THE LOVE OF TRUTH. 

Of all our duties, the love of truth, with faith 
and constancy in it, ranks first and highest. 
Truth is God. To love God and to love Truth 
are one and the same. 



SILVIO PtLLlCO. 



Awaken all y<iur energies, my young friend, to 
wish for and to will the truth ; never to permit 
yourself to be dazzled by the glare of that false 
eloquence, the boast of wild and melancholy soph- 
ists, eager to throw dark, distracting doubts 
upon every thing. Reason is of no utility, but 
rather injurious, when directed against truth — in 
order to depreciate it — to maintain ignoble views, 
or when it deduces consequences, tending to excite 
despair from the inevitable evils of this life, and by 
denying that life is a good. Insisting upon some 
apparent disorders in the universe, it refuses to 
acknowledge any system of order at all ; when 
wounded by the palpability and the death of the 
body, it is shocked at the belief of an existence 
(the / am) wholly spiritual and immortal ; when 
it considers the distinctions between vice and 
virtue as a mere dream, and when it likes to con- 
template, in man, a something worse than wild 
beast, without a spark of divine mind. 

Were man and nature, indeed, of so poor, so 
vile, so revolting a formation, why persist in losing 
our time in the pursuit of wisdom ? By the same 
reasoning we might applaud the doctrine of sui- 
cide ; but let us beware of such insidious ap- 
proaches, and suspect those who themselves dread 
the doctrines \\'hich thc\ dare to recommend. 



THE LOVE OF TRUTH « O 

Since conscience tells us that we ought to live 
(for the exception of a few weak intellects amounts 
to nothing) ; since we live to aspire after good ; 
since we feel that the welfare of man consists in 
his not debasing himself into a worm^ but in dig- 
nifying, and elevating his mind to God ; it is 
clear there can be no sound use of reason except 
in so far as it presents to man a lofty idea of his 
own possible dignity, and impels him to seek its 
attainment. 

This being once acknowledged, let us boldly 
cast away all scepticism, cynicism, and all other 
degrading systems of philosophy 5 let us bind our- 
selves to the belief of truth,— to the noble and the 
good. To have faith, it is necessary to wish to 
have faith ; it is necessary to love ardently the 
truth. It is this love only which can inspire the 
soul with energy ; he who can be content to lan- 
guish in endless doubts, relaxes all the springs of 
mind. 

To good faith in all right principles, add the 
determination of invariably presenting, in your- 
self, the expression of truth in all your words and 
in all your actions. Man's conscience can find 
no repose except in the bosom of truth. He who 
states a falsehood, even if undiscovered, bears his 
b2 



6 SILVIO PELLICO. 

own punishment within him ; he feels that he lias 
betrayed a duty, and in so far degraded himself. In 
order not to fall into the low habit of lying, the 
only plan is to form a determinaticm not to speak 
falsely at all. If we yield to a single exception I 
to this rule, there is no reason we should not in- 
dulge two ; if two, Hfty, and so on, without any 
limits whatever. It is in this way that many be- 
come by degrees so horribly addicted to feign, to 
impose, to exaggerate, and at length to calumniate, 
that you can neither take their own evidence 
against others, nor believe them even when they 
speak ill of themselves. The most corrupt periods 
are those in which false accusations and all man- 
ner of lies and calumnies so much abound. It is 
then that general suspicion, suspicion between 
father and son, that an unseasonable multiplying 
of protests, oaths and perfidies, — that a diversity 
of i)olitical, religious, and even of literarv opinions, 
prevail on all sides. Acting as an incessant . 
stimulus to invent deeds and designs derogatory' I 
to the other party, it then becomes a general 
persuasion that it is lawful to crush an adver- 
sary by any means ; blasphemy begins to prevail ; 
the rage for bringing false witnesses against 
others infects parties like a plague ; and such 



THE LOVE OF TRUTH. 



being easily found, it is as easy a task to sustain 
and exaggerate their charges as to aiFect to believe 
that they are substantiated. They who do not 
possess simplicity of heart, always consider the 
hearts of others as being capable of deceit. If 
they hear any one speak who does not please their 
fancy, they will pretend to find some evil design 
in what he says ; if they see another offering up 
his devotions, or doing some charitable deed, they 
will directly thank heaven that they are at least 
no hypocrites, like him. 

But though born in an age when the vice of 
lying and extreme distrust cast their slime over 
too much of what is valuable and sacred, hold 
yourself free and clean-handed from crimes at 
once so despicable and revolting. Feel gene- 
rously disposed to rely upon the truth of others, 
and should they refuse to believe you in turn, do 
not give way to anger, but content yourself that 
it shines 

" Agli occhi di colui che tutto vede." 
Refulgent in the eye which all things sees. 



S1L\ 1(J PKLI.ICO. 



SKCTIOX 111. 

ON RELIGION. 

'I'akin(; it for granted that man is something 
beyond the brnte, that he possesses within him 
some spark of heaveidy fire, we are bound to hold 
in tlie liighest esteem all such sentiments as tend 
most to dignify his nature. Now, as it is evident 
that no sentiment can so much raise him in the 
scale of mind as aspiring, notwithstanding all 
misfortunes, to perfection, to felicity, and to 
God, it results that we are compelled to ac- 
knowledge the excellency of religion, and to 
cultivate it. 

Do not be dismayed by the number of idle wits 
or profane jesters, who because you are religious 
will have the hardihood to call you a hypocrite. 
Without vigour of mind you can possess no one 
virtue ; you can fulfil no high duty. Even to be 
pious, it requires that you should be free from 
pusillanimity. 

As little let it alarm you that you should be 
associated, as a Christian, with many inferior 
intellects, little capable of appreciating the sub- 



RELIGION. 9 

limity of genuine religion. It is no reason that, 
because it is incumbent upon the general mass to 
be religiously disposed, religion itself should par- 
take of any thing vulgar. If, then, the ignorant 
are constrained to be honest and decorous, shall 
the man of cultivated mind blush to comply thus 
far with the general law ? 

The exercise of reason, and the result of your 
studies, will have informed you that there is no 
religion nearly so pure as that of Christianity ; 
none more exempt from errors, of brighter sanc- 
tity, and bearing in all its features more mani- 
festly the imprint of Divine Mind. There is not 
any which has had so much influence in pro- 
moting and extending civilisation on all sides ; 
in abolishing or mitigating the terrific scourge of 
slavery ; in causing to be acknowledged a spi- 
ritual bond of brotherhood in the eye of God, and 
in drawing that bond of brotherhood closer to the 
Deity himself. 

Dwell frequently upon these facts, and in par- 
ticular upon the strength of the historical proofs 
by which they are established ; for they are such 
as will stand the test of the most dispassionate 
and rigid examination. 

Farther, not to be deluded by the sophisms 



10 SILVIO PKLLICO. 

advaiictnl a«^iiinst tlu' validity of these proofs 
conibino with this examination the recollection (»1 
tlie threat ninnber of distinguished men who have 
acknowledged them to be complete and unan- 
sweraiilc ; of tlie manv powerful thinkers of our 
own times, and even as far back as Dante, St. 
Thomas, St. Augustine, and the earliest Father- 
of the church. 

Every nation will supply you with illustrious 
names, such as no sceptic, however ingenious or 
daring, will venture to despise. 

The celebrated Bacon, so much vaunted by tli* 
empiric school^ far from being a free-thinker, 
like the most ardent of his panegyrists, always 
declared that he was a Christian. Grotius was 
a Christian, and wrote a Treaiise upon the Trulh 
of Religion, although in some points he may have 
fallen into error. Leibnitz was one of the most 
zealous supporters of Christianity. Newton was 
not ashamed to write in proof of the Harmony of 
the Gospels, The excellent Locke, too, wrote 
upon the Reasonableness of Christianity. That 
distinguished physician, and man of immense 
strength and cultivation of intellect, our own 
Volta, preserved throughout life the character of 
the most virtuous of catholics. Minds of this 



A FEW QUOTATIONS. 11 

stamp, with so many otherS;, ought assuredly to be 
allowed some weight in proving that Christianity 
is in perfect harmony with sound sense ; with 
that sense, I mean^ which is capable of applying 
and generalising its knowledge and its researches ; 
not restricted^ not one-sided, and not perverted 
by the rage for vain scoffing and impiety. 



SECTION IV. 

i A FEW QUOTATIONS. 

j ' Among the celebrated men of all ages are to be 
1 ranked some of an irreligious character^ and not a 
few who have occasionally fallen into errors and 
t inconsistencies in point of christian faith. But 
] what are we to conclude from that ? Many have 
Written against Christianity, and as many against 
its general . doctrine ; they have asserted much 
and have proved nothing. The most eminent of 
them have been constrained to admit, in one or 
other of their works, the superior wisdom of the 
very religion which they impugned, or which 
I they so ill practised. 
*■■ The following extracts, although they can lay 
nio claim to novelty, lose nothing of their im- 
portance when applied to the present subject ; 



lL> 



sn.VIO PKLMCO. 



and it may be of use to repeat them. In lii^ 
" Eniilius," Jean Jacques Housseau wrote thes. 
memorable words : '' I confess that the majesl\ 
o^ the scriptures confounds me ; the sanctity <>i 
the gospel sjieaks j)owerfully to my heart. 
Examine the works of the philosophers with all 
their pomp ; hc»w thev sink into insignificance 
l>efore it ! Is it ])ossib]e that a ])ook, at onc^ 
so sublime and so simple, can be the work of 
men ; — is it possible that lie of whom it recount- 
the history could be only a man ? The action- 
of Socrates, respecting which no one doubts, arc 
far less strongly attested than those attributed to 
Jesus Christ. Moreover, to suppose a number 
of men to have combined in composing this book, 
rather than that one only should have supplied 
the subject of it, would be to shun, not to remove 
the difficulty ; it would in fact be rendering it 
only the more incomprehensible. The gospel 
indeed displays the character of truth at once so 
grand, so luminous, so perfectly inimitable, that 
the inventors of it would be yet more wonderful 
than the hero/' 

The same writer also observes : 

'' Avoid those who, under the pretext of ex- 
plaining nature, attempt to spread desolating 
doctrines in the hearts of men. Overthrowing, 



A FEW QUOTATIONS. 13 

destroying^ trampling upon every thing which 
men ought to respect^ they deprive the afflicted 
of their last consolation in misfortune ; they 
remove from the rich and powerful the only 
restraint upon their passions ; they eradicate 
from the recesses of the heart the remorse of 
crime^ the hope of virtue ; and then boast that 
I they are the benefactors of the human race. 
Truth, they presume to say, is never injurious to 
mankind. In this, too, I agree; and it is, in 
my opinion, a proof that that which they preach 
is not truth. . . /' 

Montesquieu, although not irreproachable in 
I matters of religion, invariably expressed indig- 
i nation against those who ascribed to Christianity 
I faults it does not possess. 

j ^^ Bayle," he declares," after casting insult upon 
( all religions, proceeds to libel Christianity. He 
i lias the audacity to assert, that true christians 
I could never compose a state which would be able 
8 to subsist. But why ? They would form a body 
of citizens, eminently enlightened in regard to 
their duties, and animated by the noblest zeal for 
the fulfilment of them. They would well under- 
stand the rights of natural defence ; the more they 
believed that they were indebted to religion, so 
c 



11 SILVIO PKI.LH'O. 

iniicli the inori' would tlicy feel what was due to 
tlieir country. How wonderful that the christian 
religion, which seems to aim only at happiness in 
a life to come, should be proved also to constitute 
our real felicity in this*." Farther he observes: 
''It is bad reasoning to charge Christianity with 
those evils which attended its introduction, while 
we lose sight of the signal benefits which it has 
conferred upon society. Were we to recount tlie 
various sufferings produced by the establishment 
of civil laws, by monarchy, or by republican 
government, we sliould excite horror ; were we 
to recal to mind the succession of wholesale 
slaughters committed by kings, and the renowned 
Greek and Roman commanders ; the destruction 
of people and of cities by those fierce Condotlieri ; 
the devastations of Timur and of Ghengis Khan, 
we should find how much we owe to Christianity, 
in the possession of acknowledged political rights, 
— a certain right of nations in regard to war- 
rights for which human nature can never be suf- 
ficiently grateful f." 

The great Byron, of wonderful and gigantic 
intellect, who so unhappily idolised, by turns, 



• See Spirit of Laws, book iii., chap. 6. 
-f- Montesquieu, Book xxiv., chap. 2, 3. 



A FEW QUOTATIONS. 15 

both virtue and vice^ truth and error, but who 
inwardly felt that consuming thirst for truth and 
virtue_, — inherent in noble minds — frankly testi- 
fied to the veneration he was constrained to feel 
towards the general doctrines of Christianity. He 
was even desirous that his daughter should be 
educated in the catholic faith ; and it is known^ 
that^ in one of his letters^ speaking of the determi- 
nation to which he had come, he gives as his chief 
reasons, that in no other church did the light of 
truth appear so clearly to his mind. 

The friend of Byron, and the greatest poet 
since his departure of whom England can boast, 
Thomas Moore, — after having spent years of 
doubt in regard to the choice of a religion, would 
seem to have directed the whole force of his active 
mind to the investigation of Christianity. He 
found that there was no method of becoming a 
christian, and a good reasoner, without adopting 
the universal christian and catholic doctrine, freed 
from its temporal power and its long existing 
abuses. He wrote an account of the researches 
he had made, and the irresistable conclusion to 
which he had been compelled to come *. 

* See Travels of an Irish Gentleman, &c. 



16 SILVIO i»Ki.LlCO. 



SECTION V. 

PROPOSITION RESPECTING RELIGION. 

The considerations liere adduced, and the 
imiiicrous proofs which exist in favour of Chris- 
tianity, and of an universal Christian Church, 
should urge you to repeat similar words, and to 
exclaim with noble resolution, — ^' I will oppose, 
with clear head and sound heart, all those specious 
and inconclusive arguments with which it is cus- 
tomary to attack the christian religion. 

*' I perceive that it is not true that its general 
catholic doctrine is opposed to the light of reason 
and intellectual cultivation. 1 see that what is 
asserted of its being adapted to barbarous periods, 
but not to the present, is not true ; because, after 
being highly instrumental in the civilisation of 
Asia, in that of Greece, in that of Rome, and in 
the infinite number of states of the middle ages, it 
was equally adapted to all those people who subse- 
quent to those ages received the light of civilisation, 
and it is, at this hour, also adapted to minds and 
intellects Avhich do not yield in dignity and power 
to any in the world. I liiid, that frcnn the ear 



i 



PROPOSITION RESPECTING RELIGION. 17 

liest heresiarchs until the school of Voltaire and his 
companions^ up to the Saint Simonians of our day, 
all have boasted of teaching some better doctrine^ 
and not one has succeeded. Whilst^ therefore, I 
glory in proclaiming myself an enemy to barbarism 
and a friend to knowledge, I am proud of being a 
catholic in its most enlightened and comprehensive 
sense^ the advocate of christian faith. I pity him 
who derides me, and affects to confound my doc- 
trine with that of the fanatic or the Pharisee/' 

Thus clearly seeing and proclaiming your 
Christian faith, be firm and consistent in it. 
Honour religio n as much as it is in your 
power, both with heart and understanding, and 
abide by it alike among believers or unbelievers. 
Do not display it, however, by mere cold com- 
pliance with the usual forms of its worship ; but 
I inspire these forms with the soul of elevated 
thoughts ; raise them to a noble admiration of the 
sublimity of its mysteries^ without one arrogant 
wish to explain them. Imbibe the refreshing 
virtues thence only to be derived, never forget- 
ting that simple adoration can avail you nothings 
if you do not propose to adore God equally in all 
your works. 

The beauty and the truth of the catholic reli- 
c2 



18 S1L\10 PELLICO. 

gion, in this comprehensive sense, appear with pecu- 
liar bri;^htne.ss to the minds of some ; they feel sen- 
sible that no philosophy can he more philosophicalj 
none more h(>stile towards injustice^ more friendly 
to all the benefits and advantages mankind can 
])ossess. They are nevertheless borne away by 
the cnrrent ; they live as if Christianity belonged 
to the conmion herd, a thing in which the fashion- 
able and polished had no participation. I, who 
made one of that wretched class, know how diffi- 
cult it is to break the chain of this evil spell. 
Should you ever be in danger, make an equally 
daring struggle to regenerate your mind. The 
ridicule of other unhappy slaves cannot affect you 
when it is your duty to avow a noble sentiment — 
and what sentiment more noble than that of 
honouring and loving God ! 

But, in the supposition that you may have to 
exert all your energy to free yourself from false 
doctrines, or from indifference and apathy, and in 
order to embrace a clear profession of faith, do not 
give to the incredulous the scandalous spectacle 
of absurd hypocrisy and of cowardly scruples; 
be humble in the eyes of God and in the sight 
of your fellow-beings, but never lose sight of 
your true dignity as a mm, nor turn from the 



PHILANTHROPY OR CHARITY. 19 

light of sound reason. Mere reason, in its worldly- 
sense, Avhich foments pride and hatred^ is every 
way opposed to tlie Gospel. 



SECTION VI. 

ON PHILANTHROPY OR CHARITY. 

It is only through religion that man can be 
taught to feel, in what real philanthropy and pure 
charity may be said to consist. The word charity 
is one of powerful import, as is also that of phi- 
lanthropy, notwithstanding that many sophists 
have dared to ridicule its sacredness. The apostle 
made use of it in order to signify love of hu- 
manity, and he also applied it to that love of 
humanity which dwells in God himself. In the 
Epistle of Titus (chap, iii), we read, ^^ When 
appeared the benignity and the philanthropy of 
our Redeemer and Lord." 

The Omnipotent loves mankind, and wishes 
that each of us should love them. It is not in 
our power, as we before said, to be good, to be 
content with ourselves or to esteem ourselves^ ex- 
cept upon condition of imitating him in this 
generous love; without wishing for the virtue and 



20 SILVIO PKLLICO. 

tlie happiness of our neiglibour, and doing all in 
our power to serve liiiri. 

This h)ve comj)rehends almost every human 
^ift, and is an essential part of the love which wc 
owe to God, as appears from many sublime pas- 
sages in the holy writings, and more particularly 
in this : — '' The King will say to those who 
stand on his right hand, * Come, oh ye blessed of 
my Father ! enter into the kingdom prepared for 
you even from the foundation of the world. I 
\\'as hungry, and you gave me to eat ; I was 
thirsty, and you gave me drink ; I was a stranger, 
and you received me ; naked, and you clad me ; 
sick, and you visited me ; in prison, and you came 
to see me/ Then will the righteous make an- 
swer, ' Lord, when saw we Thee hungry and fed 
Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee drink ? When 
saw we Thee a stranger and received Thee, or 
naked and clothed thee ? Or when saw we Thee 
sick or in prison, and came to see Thee ?* And 
the King shall answer and say unto them : 
' Verily I say unto you ; inasmuch as you have 
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, 
ye have done it unto me.' " 

It is well to form an elevated model of man in 
our own minds, and to endeavour to come as near 



PHILANTHROPY OR CHARITY. 21 

it as we can. But what am I saying ? That type or 
model is given to us by our religion ; and ah ! 
what excellence does it not display ! He^ whom 
it presents for our imitation, combines the 
gentle and the brave in character, in the highest, 
in the most comprehensive, in the most civilised 
and polished degree He was the irrecon- 
cilable enemy of all oppression and of all hypo- 
crisy ; the great Philanthropist^ who pardoned all 
except the impenitently wicked ; the one who 
could avenge himself and yet forbore ; the one 
who made brothers of the poor, and threatened 
not even the fortunate of the earthy provided 
they remembered that they were still brethren of 
the poor ; the man who estimated not individuals 
from their rank in knowledge or in prosperity^ 
but by their actions and the affections of the 
heart. He is the only great philosopher in whom 
no speck of human frailty is to be found ; he is 
the full manifestation of God in a being of our 
own kind ; he is the Human-Deity, uniting in 
one link heaven and earth. 

He who bears in his mind so perfect a model, 
with how much reverence will he not rescard 
humanity ! Love is always in proportion to our 
esteem. In order to love humanity, it is first 



2*J SILVIO I'ELLICO. 

nocessiirv \\v should learn to esteem it. He, on 
the contrary, who forms to himself a mean, ii: 
noble, and variable model, who is pleased to regani 
mankind as a herd of wily and ferocious beasts, 
born to no higher destiny than to feed^ to proj)a- 
gate their species, to toil, and to return to dust ; 
he who can see nothing vast or great in the 
onward path of civilisation, in the triumph of the 
sciences and the arts, in the research of justice, in 
our strange uncontrollable tendency towards what 
is beautiful, and good, and heavenly ; what mo- 
tives can he have to respect or love an individual 
of his kind — to urge him forward in the race of 
virtue, or to sacrifice anything for his welfare? 

To love humanity, it is necessary to know how 
to regard, without offence, its weaknesses and its 
vices. When we behold it brutalised in igno- 
rance, let us consider how admirable must be that 
faculty in man, which enables him to ascend 
beyond that thick and murky region, and shine 
forth only the brighter after continued ages' 
eclipse of the mind ; nay often, even in the 
reign of ignorance itself, displaying sublime social 
virtues, becoming illustrious by his courage, his 
compassion, his gratitude, and his justice ! 

Those individuals who never proceed a step in 



ESTEEM OF MANKIND. 23 

the career of enlightenment^ and who never at- 
tempt to practise virtue^ are individual excep- 
tions, not part and parcel of humanity. If, and 
in how far^ they will stand exonerated in the eyes 
of God., is known to God alone. Let it suffice us, 
that no more will be demanded from each of us 
than the fair value of the sum entrusted to our 



SECTION VII. 

ON THE ESTEEM OF MANKIND. 

In human nature we esteem those who, testify- 
ing in themselves to its moral grandeur, point out 
to us that which we ought to emulate. We may 
be unable to equal them in fame ; but this is not 
necessary. In genuine worth we can always 
aspire to the highest standard. I mean in the 
cultivation of noble sentiment, so soon as we can 
think and reason, when born under common ad- 
vantages, for ourselves. 

If ever, therefore, we feel tempted to despise 
humanity from what we behold with our own 
eyes, or from what we read in history of its base- 
ness and its excesses, let us turn our attention 
to those numerous and venerable names which 



lM SII.V/O PELLirO. 

threw lustre round tlie jieriods in which they 
lived, 'i'lie irritable but generous Byron used to 
tell me, that this was: the only method he couhl 
adopt to save him from falling into absolute mis- 
anthropy : '• The first great man/' he observed, 
'' who thus occurs to my mind is always ^Moses ; 
Moses, who restored to greatness a people immersed 
in utter degradation ; who rescued it from the 
opprobrium of idolatry and slavery ; who dictated 
to that people a law full of wisdom, a wonderful 
bond between the religion of the patriarchs and the 
religion of civilised periods, — I mean the Gospel. 
The great qualities, with the institutions, of Moses, 
were the means by which Providence produced 
among that people the distinguished men, brave 
warriors, excellent citizens, prophets zealous for 
the right, who foretold the fall of the haughty 
and hypocritical, and the future civilisation of all 
nations. 

'* When I think of some of these great men, and 
in particular my favourite INIoses," added Byron, 
" I always repeat with enthusiasm that splendid 
line of Dante — 

' Che di vc(ierli, in me stesso m*esalto !* 

* Whom to behold is to exalt myself. 



ESTEEM OF MANKIND. 25 

and I then am enabled to resume my good opinion 
of this race of Adam, and of the spirits which it 
enshrines/' 

These words of the greatest of England's poets, 
remained impressed indelibly upon my mind, and 
I confess that I have derived no inconsiderable 
aid by adopting his own noble thoughts whenever 
1 assailed by the temptation of falling into misan- 
thropical views. 

In truth, the grand minds which have appeared, 
and continue to appear, amply refute the assertions 
of those who entertain mean opinions of the nature 
of man. Let us only cast a glance upon the splen- 
did list furnished us by antiquity ! Look at the 
Roman annals ! How many, during the barbarism 
of the middle ages, and in the succeeding periods 
of civilisation, throw lustre upon their race ! There 
the martyrs to truth ; here the benefactors of the 
afflicted ; in other parts, the fathers of the church, 
presenting in themselves a miracle of gigantic 
philosophy, united to the most ardent charity ; 
and everywhere valiant patriots, the advocates of 
justice, restorers of light and truth, learned poets, 
men of profound science, and skilled artists. 
Yet neither the remoteness of ages, nor the glo- 
rious destinies of these individuals, should strike 

D 



2() SILViO I»KLLICO. 

our imagination as something belonging to a (lit 
ferent iiatiiro from ourselves. No ! They were 
in tlieir oritriu no more (lemi<:ods than ourselves. 
They were the offspring of woman ; they were 
troubled, and tlicy \vej)t like ourselves ; they were 
bound like us to struggle against their evil in- 
clinations : at times they felt humiliated, again to 
triumph over themselves. 

But the annals of nations, and other remaining 
monuments, record only a small part of the splen- 
did minds which have adorned the world. And 
thousands upon thousands, at this very period, 
without any views of celebrity, do honour to the 
name of man, devoting the whole vigour of their 
understanding, their upright and courageous ac- 
tions, to his improvement, by drawing closer the 
ties of brotherhood with all noble intellects en- 
gaged in the same holy cause j the brotherhood, 
we venture to repeat, which raises them to a com- 
munion with God. 

To call to mind the excellence and the number 
of the good is not to delude ourselves, nor is it to 
regard only the beautiful side of humanity, by 
denying that there exists a large portion of the 
Ignorant and the wicked. They are numerous, it 
is true ; but what I wish to enforce is, that man 



ESTEEM OF MANKIND. 27 

is capable of becoming great and admirable by his 
reason, — tliat he may avoid ignorance and corrup- 
tion^ — that he can at all times^ in every stage of 
cultivation, under every aspect of fortune^ make 
himself noble and estimable by his virtues ; and 
that owing to these considerations he lays claim to 
the applause of every intelligent being. 

By thus holding him in the estimation he de- 
serveSj perceiving his natural impulse towards the 
attainment of infinite perfection ; his part and 
portion in the immortal world of ideality^, in ad- 
dition to his connexion with the laws of the ma- 
terial world ; and knowing that he can emerge 
from the mere herd of animal existence by which 
he is surrounded^ and exclaim^ ^^ I am something 
beyond all these^ and every earthly thing without 
me/* — we shall^ by such considerations, feel our 
sympathies expand^ and our energies in his cause 
invigorated. We shall feel greater compassion 
for his miseries and his errors^, while we reflect 
upon his inherent greatness. We shall feel only 
regret when we behold the king of created beings 
debasing himself by his ill conduct ; we shall be 
anxious either to throw a religious veil over his 
faults, or to offer him a Christian's hand to raise 
him from the degradation into which he had fallen. 



28 ^^II.^ H' PKLLICO 

\W shiill exult whcMiever we see him mindful of 
liis real dignity, — undaunted in the midst of ca- 
lamity and reproach, — triumphant in the most 
arduous struggles, and pursuing his onward career 
with all the resistless force of christian will, to 
approach as nearly as possible the divine model 
which he has in view. 



SECTION VIII. 

UN LOVE OF COUNTRY. 

All those affections which bind men in a com- 
munity (»f interests, and impel them to practise 
virtue, are inherently noble. The cynic, so eager 
in advancing his many sophisms against every 
generous sentiment, is accustomed to boast of phi- 
lanthropy, in order to run down the love of our 
country. Hence he says, " My country is the 
world ; the little corner in which I was born has 
no claim to my reasonable preference ; there are 
other countries of equal value, where I can find 
equal or greater advantages ; patriotism, in short, 
is only another kind of egotism, extending through 
a certain number of men, and encouraged in order 
to authorise their hatred of the rest of the world." 



LOVE OF COUNTRY. 29 

But you, my friend, scorn to make yourself the 
laughing-stock of a philosophy so despicable. Its 
character is to degrade and vilify mankind ; to 
deny virtue, to call by the name of pride and per- 
versity all which can truly elevate his nature. It 
is as easy as it is despicable to muster a number 
of grandly sounding words in deterioration of every 
thing most dear and sacred in social life, or tend- 
ing to its happiness and improvement. 

The doctrine of the cynic would keep man 
down — down to the very dust ; true philosophy 
is that which pants to raise him in his own eyes ; 
it is a philosophy of religion, and honours the 
love of country. 

Assuredly, we may also say of the whole world, 
that it is our country. All nations are but frac- 
tions of one great family, which, owing to its 
number, cannot be regulated by a single govern- 
ment, although it may have God for its supreme 
ruler. To regard the various individuals of our 
kind as one family, is favourable towards exciting 
benevolent feelings for humanity in general. Such 
views, however, by no means interfere with others 
equally just. 

It is equally a fact that the human race are 
divided into different nations. Each people is 
d2 



30 



SILVIO 1»KLLI('(K 



formed by a iiuiiiIkt of jxtsoiin connected by ti 
coiiiiniinioii of la\\s, rcli^^ion, customs, language, 
identity of origin, ^lory, misfortunes, and hopes ; 
or if not by all these, the «:reater part of these 
elements unite in produciii;^ a peculiar sympathy 
and concord. To call this, and the union of in- 
terests, social egotism, is nnich as if a rage for 
vsatire should urge us to libel paternal and filial 
love itself, describing it as a conspiracy between 
each father and his sons against the general in- 
terests of philanthropy. 

Let us never forget that truth is many-sided j 
that there is not one among the virtuous senti- 
ments which is not deserving of cultivation. Can 
any one of them, therefore, by its exclusive nur- 
ture prove injurious? Avoid this exclusiveness, 
and it will not — cannot do so. The love of hu- 
manity is a noble love ; but it ought never to 
supersede that of our native place, which also is 
entitled to the praise of nobleness ; but neither 
ought it to supersede the love of humanity in 
general. 

Shame to the ignoble mind which can con- 
template, without sympathetic applause, that mul- 
tiplicity of views and motives which the sacred 
instinct of brotherhood among men, with all those 



LOVE OF COUNTRY. 31 

interchanges of honour^ aid^ and courtesy^ is 
capable of producing ! For instance^ two European 
travellers happen to meet in some other part of 
the world ; one may have been born at Turin, the 
other in London, They are both from Europe; 
and this of itself constitutes a certain bond of 
love^ — a certain kind of patriotism^ and thence a 
laudable solicitude to do each other good offices. 
Now let us imagine some other individuals thus 
meeting by accident, none of whom have been ac- 
customed to speak the same language. You would 
hardly believe there could exist a common pa- 
triotism among them; but you are deceived; — 
they are Swiss : — one from an Italian^ one from a 
French^ a third from a German canton. The 
identity of political union^ which protects each, 
supplies the want of a common language^ attaches 
them to each other^ and invites them to make 
generous sacrifices for the good of a country which 
is not a nation. 

We behold in Italy, or in Germany, another 
spectacle; men living under different laws, and 
thus having become different people, — sometimes 
constrained to make war upon each other. But 
they speak, or at least they write, the same lan- 
guage ; they reverence the same father-land, they 



'A2 SILVIO PKLLICO. 

trlory in tlic same literature ; tliey possess similar 
tastes, require the same sweet interclian<^es of 
friendship, of mutual indulgence and support. 
Impulses like these, render them at once more 
j)i()us and more emulous in the discharge of gentle 
and courteous offices. 

The love of country, then, whether it applies to 
a tract of immense extent, or to the most restricted 
spot, is always a noble sentiment. There is not 
even part of a nation which cannot lay claim to 
its peculiar honours, — princes who acquired for it 
its relative power, more or less considerable ; 
some memorable historic facts ; good institutions ; 
— some noble prevailing feature in its character ; 
men illustrious for their courage — their policy, 
and distinction in the arts and sciences. Hence 
arise the various reasons men have for fostering 
their local predilections in regard to some native 
province, some native city — the town or village in 
which they first saw the light. 

But let us take care that the love of country, 
as well in its widest as in its most restricted 
seiise^ do not degenerate into vain boasting ; as 
for instance, in having been born in this or that 
land, in nourishing haired against other cities 
other provinces, (►r other nations. Patriotism ot 



TRUE PATRIOTISM. 33 

an illiberal stamp^ invidious or violent^ instead of 
being a virtue^ is a vice to be shunned. 



SECTION IX. 

TRUE PATRIOTISM. 

To love our country with truly elevated feel- 
ing, we ought to begin by supplying it^ in our- 
selves, with citizens of whom that country need 
not feel ashamed. The bare idea of being scoffers 
of religion, and of good manners, and yet loving 
our country worthily, is a thing wholly incom- 
patible, as much so as that of forming a just 
appreciation of some beloved object, and yet 
imagining that we are not bound to be constant 
to her. 

If any man revile religion, conjugal faith, 
decency and probity, and still exclaims, '^ My 
country, my country I " Do not believe him to 
be sincere. He is a hypocrite of patriotism ; he 
is one of the worst of bad citizens. No man can 
be a good patriot who is not a virtuous man ; 
who does not feel and love the whole of his duties, 
and use every exertion to discharge them. The 



34 SILVIO PELLICO. 

patriot never debases himself by adulation of the 
powerful, nor by a malignant hatred of all autho- 
rity — to show servility or want of respect, is an 
extreme to be e([ually avoided. If he happen to 
be in the employment of government, his object 
ought not to be his own aggrandisement, but the 
lionour and prosperity of the prince and the 
people. 

Is he a private citizen, — the honour and pros- 
perity of prince and people ought equally to form 
his ardent wish ; in his own ca])acity he should 
do nothing to counteract, but all he can to extend 
them. 

He is aware that in all societies abuses exist ; 
he is zealous for their correction, but he turns 
with abhorrence from all violent and sanguinary 
means ; inasmuch as, of all abuses, these are the 
most fatal and terrible. 

The true patriot neither invokes nor excites 
the rage of civil dissensions ; rather by word and 
example, he restrains the violent ; and as much 
as in him lies, is the advocate of forgiveness and 
of peace. He ceases to be gentle only when the 
independence of his countrv is in danger ; he then 
assumes a lion-port, and he fights to conquer or 
to perish. 



FILIAL LOVE. 35 



SECTION X. 



ON FILIAL LOVE. 

Your career of action commences^ remember, 
in your own family — the first arena of virtue is 
the paternal mansion. What shall we say of 
those who affect to love their country — to boast 
of heroism — and yet fail in so high a duty as that 
of filial piety } 

There can be no patriotism, not the minutest 
germ of heroic feeling; in a mind where ' black 
ingratitude so foully dwells ! ' 

Scarcely does the intellect of the boy open to 
the idea of his duties, when nature seems to say, 
^^ Love your parents ! " The instinct, in fact, of 
filial love is so strong, that it would appear as if 
no extrinsic aid were necessary to foster it through- 
out life. Nevertheless, as we before observed, 
we must put the stamp of our own will upon all 
good instincts of our nature, in order to preserve 
them entire; we must exercise an undeviating 
piety towards our parents, on the basis of a firm 
purpose. 

He who values himself upon the love of God 



3(> S1L\I() I'KI.MCO. 

and of liis country, cMiinot avoid feeling the most 
perfect reverence towards those through whom 
he became a creature of (iod, a man, and a citizen. 
A father and a niotlicT are naturally our earliest 
and hest friends: they are the beings to whom 
we ow e our Hrst and sweetest impressions, in short 
every thing ; and we are bound by the most 
sacred of all ties to feel towards them gratitude, 
respect, love, tenderness, and indulgence, and to 
express those feelings in gentle and becoming 
words. 

It is often a result of the extreme intimacy in 
which we live with persons nearest connected 
^^'ith us, that we are apt to treat them with ex- 
cessive carelessness, with little study of appear- 
ing amiable in their eyes, or of tasting that purest 
of human pleasures — the sense of having lightened 
the load of sorrow upon their hearts, and endea- 
voured to embellish their existence. Ah ! my 
young friend, guard yourself well from commit- 
ting so grievous a wrong. He who wishes to 
possess loveliness and gentleness of mind, w ill be 
ever anxiims to infuse into all his affections a 
certain voluntary correctness and elegance, which 
give to them that high degree of perfection of 
which they are susceptible. 



FILIAL LOVE. 37 

The very wish to show ourselves courteous ob- 
servers of every pleasing regard and attention 
beyond the sphere of home^ \vhilst we are deficient 
in duty and tenderness towards our parents, is as 
unreasonable as it is wicked. All lovely and 
beautiful customs are imbibed with eager and 
obedient assiduity, and have their foundation in 
the bosom of our first parental family. 

^^ What harm ! " we are accustomed to hear, 
^^ is there in living at perfect liberty with our 
parents } They are, of course, sensible that they 
are respected by their children, without the 
affected display of exterior deference, even with- 
out constraining their children to conceal their 
little crossings and their passions/' But you, 
my friend, ambitious of possessing something be- 
yond the estimation of mere vulgar minds, never 
reason thus ! For if, by being at liberty, you 
mean to be a clown — a senseless wretch — it is 
still a grievous wrong. There is no degree of 
intimacy of parentage which can justify careless- 
ness of conduct like this. 

The mind which has not the courage and self- 
denial to conduct itself at home as it would out 
of doors, to appear pleasing in the eyes of others, 
to acquire every virtue calculated to honour our 

E 



38 SlL\'n) I'KLLICO. 

species, and to lioinmr the !)< ity in the form <»t 
man, is ii low and pusillanimous mind. Truly, to 
repose from tlie noble strife of being gocjd and 
courteous, and delicate in soul and intellect, no 
season is allowable but tlie hours of slumber 
necessary to renew our spiritual career. 

Filial duty, in short, is a debt, not merely of 
gratitude but of indispensable decency. In the 
rare occurrence of o\\'ing one's birth to parents of 
weak affections, little entitled to claim our esteem, 
the mere fact of their being the authors of our 
existence confers on them a character so respect- 
able, that we cannot but incur infamy, if we dare 
to despise them ; nay, even to treat them with 
indifference or neglect. In such a case, the 
respect which you show will do you the greater 
credit, but it a\ ill not the less constitute a debt to 
be paid to nature, to the example and edification 
of your species, and to your own dignity and self- 
approval. 

Wo to him who constitutes himself a censor of 
every small defect in the character of his parents ! 
And wlicre shall we begin to exercise charity, if 
we set out by refusing it to a father and a mother? 

To require, in order to respect them, that they 
should be exempt from faults, and offer us a 



FILIAL LOVE. 39 

model of perfection, is rank pride and injustice. 
We are all of us, less or more, anxious that we 
should be esteemed and beloved ; but are we, for 
this reason, always irreproachable ? Suppose 
even that a father or a mother should be far 
below that standard of excellence we have formed 
in our own minds, we ought to exert ourselves to 
conceal their foibles from the eyes of others, to 
excuse them, and to bring into stronger relief the 
whole of their good qualities. By thus acting we 
shall improve our own characters, gradually ac- 
quiring a religious and generous disposition, with 
sagacity in discovering the merits of others. 

Often, my dear friend, let the thought so full 
of mournfulness, yet fraught with compassion and 
patience, cross your mind — ^^ those white locks 
upon which my eyes now rest, who knows in how 
brief a space they may be laid in the tomb.'^'' 
Ah ! so long as you are fortunate enough to see 
them, honour them, and endeavour to procure for 
them all the consolation in your power to relieve 
the many evils of old age -evils which you think 
not of, because you have no experience of them. 

Old age of itself naturally inclines them to 
feelings of sorrow : do not ever add to their pres- 
sure upon the failing springs of life. Let the 
invariable tenor of your manners, and your whole 



40 SILVIO PKLLICO 

conduct towards them, display gentleness and 
love ; so that the very sij^lit of you may throw a 
beam of pleasure over their countenances, and 
gladden tlicir hearts. Every smile which you 
shall bring back upon those placid lips, every 
little contentment which you can procure their 
minds, will bo to them of the most salutary ten- 
dency, and will rcHlouiul to your advantage. The 
blessings of a father and a mother upon the head 
of a grateful son, are always sanctified by the 
Divine Beinj^. 



SECTION XI. 

RESPECT TO OLD AGE AND TO OUR 

PREDECESSORS. 

Try to honour the image of your parents and 
your ancestors, in all persons who arc far in the 
decline of life. Old age is ever venerable in the 
opinion of a well-regulated mind. In ancient 
Sparta, there was a law that the young men should 
rise up at the approach of an aged fellow-citizen ; 
that they should be silent when he spoke; and 
that they should yield to him the way on meeting 
him. Let that which is not a law among our- 
selves, become a custom for the sake of decency, 
and we shall all bo the bettor for it. 



RESPECT TO OLD AGE, ETC. 41 

There is so much moral beauty in this ob- 
servance) that even they who forget to practise 
it^ are constrained to applaud it in others. An 
old man at Athens was in search of a seat at the 
Olympic games^ but the entire rows of the 
Amphitheatre were occupied. A number of 
youths of his own city beckoned to the old man to 
approach^ and with great difficulty he reached 
the spot where they sat^ when^ instead of accom- 
modating him, they burst into an insulting laugh. 
The poor old citizen, driven from place to place, 
reached at length the part where the Spartans 
were seated. Faithful to the sacred custom of 
their country, they one and all arose, and re- 
ceived the old man among them. It was then 
that the same Athenians, who had so disgrace- 
fully mocked him, struck with admiration of 
their generous rivals, rose on all sides, and loudly 
applauded them. Upon this the old man ex- 
claimed, with the tears starting into his eyes, 
^^ Truly the Athenians know what is right ; the 
Spartans practise it." 

Alexander, the Macedonian — and here I would 
willingly add the title of Great — during the 
period of his most distinguished triumphs, and in 
the very flush of victory, knew how to show due 
deference and respect to the feebleness of old age. 
E 2 



42 SIF.VIO PELLICO. 

Arrested in his march by an extraordinary fall of 
snow, he had just ordered fires to be kindled, and 
had seated himself as near them as possible to par- 
take the genial warmth. He saw among his 
soldiers a man bowed down by time, and trem- 
bling with cold. He hurried towards him, and 
with thohe invincible hands which had overturned 
the empire of Darius, took the exhausted way- 
farer and bore him to his own seat. Parini was 
accustomed to say, that no man was bad except 
the wretch capable of despising old age, woman, 
and misfortune. The same writer was consistent 
in this opinion, by so exercising the influence he 
had over his disciples as to render them gentle 
and obedient to old age. It once happened tliat 
he was greatly incensed at a young man who had 
been accused of some serious fault. In this mood 
it fell out that he met the culprit in a lane, and 
in the act of supporting an aged friar, whom he 
was also defending from the insults of some ruf- 
fians who had attacked him. Parini ran crying 
out to his assistance, and throwing his arms round 
the youth's neck — '^ Just now I thought you one 
of the worst lads in the world ; but now I have 
witnessed your compassion for old age, I believe 
you capable of many virtues." 



RESPECT TO OLD AGE, ETC 43 

But how much more is old age to be respected 
in the persons of those who bore the cares and 
anxieties attendant upon our childhood and those 
of our juveniscence ; of those who assisted to the 
best of their ability in forming our characters and 
the dispositions of our minds. Let us view their 
faults with indulgence^ estimate with generous 
feelings the amount of trouble we have caused 
them^ the affection which they lavished upon us, 
and the sweet return which the constancy of our 
love must yield them. No ! whoever devotes 
himself with noble zeal to the education of youth, 
can never be adequately rewarded by the mere 
bread which such a pursuit procures him. Those 
cares, embracing both a paternal and a maternal 
scope, are not of a mercenary nature. They are 
calculated to ennoble the person who habituates 
himself to the practice of the excellent qualities 
which they require. They accustom him to 
offices of love, and they give him a right to the 
esteem and love of others. 

Let us endeavour to show a filial deference to 
all our superiors, because they are our superiors. 

Let us farther display our filial respect for the 
memory of all those who have merited well of 
their country, or of humanity. Their writings 



44 SIJ.N lU PELLICO. 

ought to be esteeiDcd sacred in our eyes, aiul 
etjually so ought their portraits and their tombs. 
When, also, we consider tlie character of j)ast 
ages, and the remains of barbarism which we 
luive inherited from them, — when groaning under 
tlic burden of many existing evils, we behold in 
them the consequences of passions and errors 
])eculiar to times now gone,- do not let us yield 
to the evil temptation of vituperating our fore- 
fathers. Let us rather make it a point of con- 
science to form a calm, dispassionate, and humane 
judgment in regard to them. Tliey engaged in 
wars which we now deplore; but were they not 
either justified by necessity, or by those strange 
but blameless illusions, of which, at this distance, 
we can form no correct idea ? They called in 
foreign assistance, which produced fatal effects, 
and might not necessity plead for them ? They 
established institutions no longer in harmony with 
our ideas ; but does it follow that they were not 
adapted to the period in which they flourished ? 
indeed that they might not be the best which 
human wisdom couhl found in relation with the 
social elements by uliich they were surrounded? 
Criticism, whether literary or political, upon 
our forefathers, ouLilit to be enlightened and com- 



FRATERNAL LOVE. 45 

prehensive, and to partake of none of the little- 
nesses of calumnious invective, none of the self- 
sufficiency of modern superiority^ no arrogant 
depreciation of those who cannot rise from their 
tombs and exclaim^ ^^ The reasons which actuated 
our conduct^ children, were very different ! " The 
following saying of Cato the Elder is justly 
celebrated : — ^^ It is a difficult thing to enable 
men who come after us to understand the motives 
which justify our present course of action/' 



SECTION XII. 

ON FRATERNAL LOVE. 

You have brothers and sisters. Let your first 
endeavour be so to display the love which you 
owe to your fellow- creatures^ as to offer an ex- 
ample of incipient excellence by first honouring 
your parents^ and next by offices of tenderness 
and goodness towards those with whom you are 
bound in ties of fraternity, in the sweet commu- 
nity of parental origin. 

In order to exercise aright the divine science of 
charity towards all mankind^ it is necessary to 



4() SIL\'I() I»FLI.ICO 

take early lessons in tlio bosom of vonr own 
family. 

W'liat a charm is there not, for a g(K)(l and 
amiable niind, in the tlion^ht that we are chil- 
dren of the same mother ! What a charm, we 
repeat, in finding, almost as we hail the light of 
heaven, tile same common objects to venerate and 
to love ! Identity of blood, and the resemblance 
of many customs between brothers and sisters, 
naturally excites a powerful sympathy, which can 
only be destroyed by the calair.itous indulgence of 
tlie most horrible and cruel egotism. If you wish 
to be a good brother, beware of excessive egotism ; 
each day propose to yourself to exercise generosity 
in your fraternal relations. Let each of your bro- 
tliers and your sisters perceive that their interests 
are as dearly appreciated by you as your own. Il 
one of them is in fault, be indulgent^ not merely 
as you would be to another, but to a second self. 
Take delight in beholding tlicir expanding vir- 
tues, encourage them by your example, give them 
reason to bless their lot in having you for a 
brother. 

Infinitely numerous are the motives to reci- 
procal love, compassion, and common participa- 
tion in the young joys and sorrows of life which 



FRATERNAL LOVE. 47 

continually combine to keep alive and to foster 
fraternal love. Still it is necessary that we should 
reflect on all these^ or otherw^ise they may escape 
our attention^ and we must practise self-denial in 
order to feel them as we ought. Beautiful and 
delicate sentiments are not to be acquired except 
by the exercise of assiduous and resolute will. 
In the same manner as no one can attain to a cor- 
rect knowledge of poetry or painting without 
study^ so no one comprehends the excellence of 
fraternal love^ or any other elevated senj:iment, 
without a determined will to understand it. Do 
not let the habit of domestic intimacy make you 
forgetful of the courtesy and kindness due to a 
brother. Still greater gentleness is called for 
towards your sisters. Their sex is endued with a 
winning charm and grace of manner ; and in well- 
conducted families they generally make use of 
these amiable gifts to preserve peace through 
the entire household, to banish ill passions from 
its precincts^ and to soften down the effects of 
paternal or maternal animadversions which they 
may sometimes hear. Honour in such sisters 
the amiableness of woman's virtues ; rejoice in 
the influence they possess to soothe and to be- 
guile your m.ind. And inasmuch as nature has 



48 .^JLVIO I'KLLKO. 

formt'd them weaker and more sensitive than 
yourself, he in so far more attentive to yield 
llieni under nHliction all* the consolation y(»u ean, 
in giving tluni'iK) cause of suffering from yourself, 
and invariably showing them that respect and lov.* 
so dear to the sister's and the woman's heart. 

They, on the contrary, who contract habits of 
envy and vulgarity, in their fraternal intercourse, 
carry with them the same ill qualities into what- 
ever sphere they enter. Family intercourse, in 
all its relations, should be lovely, affectionate, and 
holy ; and thus, when a man passes the thresh- 
old of his own home, he bears along with him, in 
his connexions with the rest of society, that ten- 
dency towards esteem, and all the gentler affec- 
tions, and that confidence in virtue, which are the 
happy fruits of constant and assiduous cultivation 
of noble sentiments. 



SECTION XIII 

ON FRIENDSHIP. 

In addition to your parents and other relatives, 
who constitute the friends more immediately con- 
nected with you by thi? ties of nature, and in ad- 



FRIENDSHIP. 49 

dition to those masters wlio^ having especially 
merited your esteem, you are happy in calling 
your friends;, occasions will occur of exciting your 
particular regard for others with whose good qua- 
lities you may be less acquainted^ — I mean young 
persons of nearly your own age. 

In what instances you ought to form these new 
connexions^ and when to decline them^ can be a 
matter of little doubt. We are bound to show 
benevolence to all ; but this benevolence need not 
approach more confidential friendship, except in 
those cases where the parties have proved them- 
selves worthy of our entire esteem. Friendship 
is a species of brotherhood, in its noblest and best 
sense; indeed, it is the ideal perfection of fra- 
ternity. It is the highest union of two or three 
minds, never of more, which become almost ne- 
cessary to each other ; which have recognised 
in each other a decided disposition to cultivate 
the same intellectual and moral qualities, to rea- 
son and think in union, to attribute noble senti- 
ments to, assist and urge each other on in the 
career of good. 

'^ Among all societies,'* observes Cicero^ '^ there 
is none more noble, none more durable than that 

F 



fiO SII,\ I(> PKLLICO. 

ill wliicli iiu'ii (if similar liahils aiul pursuits 
unite tniTctluT in ImmkIs of friendship*.' 

Ik'warc not to discredit tlic sacred name of 
friendsliip by bestowin*^ it uj)on a man possessed of 
little or no woilli. He who hates religion; he 
who has not the highest regard for his dignity as 
a man, who does not strive to lionour Ins country 
l)y his judgment and his integrity, who is want- 
ing in reverence to liis parents, envious of his 
brothers, though he were the most remarkable of 
living men, for an amiableness of countenance 
and of manners ; for his eloquence, for the variety 
of his knowledge and acquirements, and for occa- 
sional impulses towards generous actions, do not 
}fou be induced to draw closer your casual con- 
nexion with him. Though he should profess the 
warmest affaction for you, intrust him not with 
your confidence ; it is only the virtuous man who 
possesses qualities to make him an estimable 
friend. Until you shall have proof that a man 
is indeed worthy upon principle, the mere possi- 
bility of his being otherwise should induce you 
not to advance beyond the limits of general 
courtesy. The interchange of perfect confidence 

• P- Of?. 



FlliENDSKIP. 51 

is a thing of deep and vital concern ; for such is 
the nature of real friendship, and any want of 
caution is an act of culpable negligence and self- 
respect. The man who attaches himself to un- 
worthy companions^ is himself unworthy ; or at 
least he causes to fall upon himself with no little 
opprobrium^ the infamy of his associates. How 
truly fortunate, therefore, is he^, who finds a real 
friend. Often^ when relying on his own resources, 
the vigour of his mind and his good purposes are 
apt to languish ; while the example and the ap- 
plause of his friend encourage him. On his outset^ 
perhaps^ he took alarm^ being conscious rather 
of his defects than of the merit which lay dormant 
in him^ but which the esteem of the man to whom 
he is attached brings into bolder relief. He then be- 
gins to blame himself for not possessing all the good 
qualities which his friend's indulgence gives him 
credit for ; emulation is excited^ and he devotes 
himself to the task of mental improvement. He 
is pleased that his good qualities do not escape 
the observation of his friend ; he is grateful for 
it; he perseveres in his new career; and thus 
impelled by friendship, a man often arrives at 
a high degree of perfection, of which he would 
otherwise have hardly imagined himself capable. 



63 81LV1U PELLICO. 

At the same time do not be too anxious to have 
friends. It is belter not to acquire them than to 
repent of liaving entered into such a connexion 
with too great precipitation. When once, liow- 
ever, you have found one, seek to evince your 
sense of his worth by every mark of elevated 
friendsliip. 

This noble communion of mind was held sacred 
by all the philosophers, and it is also sanctified 
by religion. How many noble examples of it do 
we not meet with in the Scriptures : '' The soul 
of Jonathan clung unto that of David — Jonathan 
loved him as his own soul." 

But what renders it of greater authority is its 
consecration by the lips of the Redeemer himself. 
The head of John, while sleeping, rested upon his 
master's bosom ; and only a few moments before 
his death, he pronounced from the cross these 
divine words, so full of love and friendship : — 
'^ IVIother, behold thy son ! my disciple, behold 
thy mother V I am of opinion that friendship, — 
I mean that true, elevated friendship which is 
founded upon high esteem, — is in a manner neces- 
sary to man, in order to raise him above all mean 
dispositions. It infuses into the mind something 
of a poetical glow — a sublime strength of union, 



t'niENDSHlP, 53 

rendering it more capable of encountering tlie 
stern realities of life, and supporting it in a higher 
region than that of the cloudy, earthly atmosphere 
of egotism by which it is surrounded. 

When once you shall have accepted and pro- 
mised friendship, take care to impress its duties 
upon your heart. They are numerous ; they are 
imperative on you, to render your whole tenor of 
life such as is calculated to reflect credit upon 
your friend. 

Some advise, by no means to enter into strict 
confidence with any one, inasmuch as it too 
powerfully absorbs the feelings^ distracts the 
mind, and gives rise to jealousies and disputes ; 
but I maintain, with an* excellent philosopher, 
St. Francis de Sales, who, in his Filotea animad- 
verts upon this, as being '' very bad advice/' 

He, however, admits^ that it may be prudent in 
cloisters to prevent the formation of partial at- 
tachments. '' But in the world,'* he observes, '' it 
is necessary that those who desire to stand forth 
as soldiers under the banners of virtue and the 
cross, should enter into union. Men who live in 
an age when there are so many serious impediments 
in their path towards heaven, may be compared 
with those travellers who, in rough and slippery 
f2 



64 8ILV10 PKLLICO. 

ways, luive recourse to bind tliemselves one to the 
other, in order to walk with more security. 

It is ;i fact that wo see bud p(M)j)le of every age 
oombiiiini^ for the purposes of evil ; and are we 
not justified in giving each other the hand, by way 
of su])port, and directing our united energies to 
the end of effecting some good? 



SECTION XIV. 

ON YOUR STUDIES. 

Since you possess the means, it is incumbent 
upon you to cultivate your understanding. You 
will render it better calculated to honour God, 
your country, your parents and your friends. 

The mad assertion of Rousseau, that the savage 
was the happiest of human beings, — that igno- 
rance is preferable to knowledge, is refuted by 
experience. All travellers agree in having found 
the savage in the most unhappy, degraded state : 
we all of us know that an ignorant person may be 
good ; and so may he who possesses knowledge, 
and that in a higher and more enlarged sphere. 
Knowledge is only injurious when it is combined 
with pride. But let it accompany humility, and 



YOUR STUDIES. 55 

It elevates the mind to a fresher apprehension and 
love of God^ as well as of his creatures in all their 
relations of life. 

In whatever study you engage^ ^PP^y ^^^ whole 
energy and compass of your mind to its full in- 
vestigation. Superficial studies too frequently 
produce mediocre and presumptuous men^ — men 
conscious^ indeed^ of their insignificance^ but so 
much the more violent in deteriorating; the talent 
of others, and thrusting themselves into notice for 
the purpose of sounding their own fame, — to 
show the world how great they are, and how little 
are the truly great. Hence the incessant attacks 
of pedants upon men of powerful intellect^ and 
of idle declaimers against science and philosophy. 
Hence^ also^ the strange perversity of the many^ 
who frequently hold in higher respect the writer 
who advances the boldest pretensions, but w^ho 
knows the least. 

The present age can boast men eminent for 
their extensive knowledge and acquirements, but 
how small their number in comparison with the 
vain and superficial. Scorn to belong to the 
ranks of the latter ; not from any feeling of pre- 
sumption, but from a sense of duty, from regard 



•)« 



SILVIO PKLLICO. 



to your country, from a noble appreciation of rea- 
son and nt'niind, wliicli the Creator has bestowed 
upon you. If y(m are unable to become profoundly 
learned in different branches of your studies, you 
will do well at least to gather some general ideas 
of tlio^ie subjects of which you ought not to be ig- 
norant, — you may glance over these, indeed, but 
select some one upon which to exercise the full 
vigour of your understanding — the whole force of 
your \\ill — in order not to be left behind in tlie 
intellectual race. The following advice of Se- 
neca^ moreover, is excellent on this head : '' Are 
you desirous that your reading should make a 
lasting impression up(ui your mind? Confine it to 
a few authors of sterling character ; and feed 
your mind with the sound nutriment they afford. 
To turn your attention everywhere, is much the 
same as to be nowhere at all. A life spent in travel 
brings you acquainted with many strange faces, 
but few friends. It is even so with those hasty 
readers, who, without a decided taste for any sub- 
ject, devour an infinite number of books ! " 

To whatever branch of study you more par- 
ticularly attach yourself, be upon your guard 
against falling into that very prevalent error of 



YOUR STUDIES. 57 

becoming an exclusive admirer of your own 
science, and undervaluing those sciences which 
you have not been enabled to cultivate. 

The despicable reflections of certain poets upon 
prose- writers^ and of the latter upon poetry ; of 
naturalists upon metaphysicians ; of mathema- 
ticians upon those ignorant of their own peculiar 
sciences^ with the rest of this false and depre- 
ciating spirit of criticism^ are to be avoided. All 
the sciences^,- — all the arts^ and all methods of ma- 
nifesting and making us feel what is true and 
beautiful^ have a title to our homage^ and more 
particularly to that of the educated man. 

It is not true that the exact sciences and poetry 
are incompatible. BufFon was a great naturalist^, 
and his style is rich and animated to an astonish- 
ing degree of poetical splendour^ which prevails 
throughout his entire narrative. Mascheroni was 
a good poet^ and as good a mathematician. In 
cultivating poetry^ however^ and other sciences 
connected with the beautiful^ be upon your guard 
not to pursue them with so much avidity as to de- 
prive you of that intellectual power of dwelling 
with coolness upon abstract calculations^ or the 
logical processes of mind. Suppose the eagle^ for 
instance, were to say, — ^' It is my nature to fly, 



68 SILVIO PELMCO. * 

and I can (Uilv ronsidcr obji'cts while I am Hying," 
how 1 idiruloiis it wouhl he ! Why should lie not 
be as well able to take a view of things with his 
wings folded ? 

On the other hand, do not let the coolness which 
is requisite in matters of observation lead you to 
infer, that man is only perfect when he succeeds 
in extinguishing everv ray of fancy, — when he has 
eradicated all poetical sentiment. If well regu- 
lated. I am of oi)inion that the poetical tempera- 
ment, in place of weakening the intellect, is 
favourable in several respects, both to its vivacity 
and its acuteness. 

Ill studies, as in politics, let us show a wise 
distrust of all factions and all systems. Examine 
these well in order to ascertain their real nature ; 
compare them with others, and decide imj)artially, 
if you would not have your mind enslaved. To 
wh'dt purpose were the angry conflicts between 
the extreme parties who cried up their favourite 
schools of philosophy, — the ])anegyrists and the 
depreciators of Aristotle, of Plato, and their con- 
temporaries? To what did they amount, likewise, 
in the instances of Ariosto and Tasso ? These 
idolised and calumniated masters of the lyre con- 
tinued what tliev were, — neither divinities nor 



THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 59 

common-place minds : those who had been so 
esi^er to weiVh their merits in false scales were 
justly derided ; while the worlds deafened by their 
clamours^ continued just as wise as before. 

In all your studies strive to combine calm dis- 
cernment with acumen, patient analysis with 
strength of synthetic m.ethod ; but principally 
rely upon a strong determination not to be dis- 
mayed by obstacles, and not to be elated by 
success; I mean a noble determination to en- 
lighten your mind in the manner permitted to 
reasonable beings by the Deity, — with ardour, 
but not with arroo;ance. 



SECTION XV. 

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 

The choice of a profession is a matter of the 
highest importance. Our predecessors were of 
opinion that it was desirable, before coming to a 
decision, to invoke the inspiration of the Deity. 
I am not sure whether it may not be well to 
appeal for similar aid in our own times ; at all 
events, reiiect with religious solemnity upon your 
future destination, and apply yourself to prayer. 



60 8ILV10 PKLLICO. 

If you are suhsiMjuciitly led to believe, not only 
for a day, but during entire weeks and months, 
and that with growing confidence, that there is a 
voice prompting you, which declares, '' Behold 
the course wliich you should run !" obey it u ith 
all the ardour and determination of your soul. 
Start upon your career, press forward, always 
prepared for action, and armed with such virtues 
as your calling may demand. 

It is, indeed, by the exercise of these i)rc- 
fessional virtues that every calling becomes ex- 
cellent for those who embrace it. The teaching 
of the gospel, which has in it something alarming 
to him who enters on such a task without due 
thought, and with his inclinations bent upon 
worldly amusement, is at once delightful and 
becoming to a pious and modest character. Even 
the monastic life itself, considered so intolerable 
by some, so despicable by others, is nevertheless 
pleasing to the religious philosopher, who has no 
reason to think himself a burden upon society, 
while charitably assisting the poor countryman, 
or some aged and infirm recluses by whom he 
is surrounded. The civic gown, which many feel 
to be a serious and irksome task, is delightrul to 
a man in whom there burns a zeal to defend or 



THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 61 

recover the rights of his species. The bold career 
of arms possesses an irresistible charm for the 
truly adventurous and courageous^ who feels in- 
tensely that there can be no nobler action than 
that of perilling his life in the service of his 
country. 

How wonderful to reflect that all professions^ 
from the highest to that of the humblest artisan^ 
possess true dignity, and an attraction peculiar 
to each. All that is required is to cherish those 
qualities which are the ornament of these several 
pursuits. 

It is from the circumstance of these qualities 
being neglected^ that we hear of so many who 
complain of the condition of life which they have 
themselves embraced. 

When once, however, you have made a prudent 
choice of any one profession, be above following 
the example of these unworthy censurers of their 
own judgment. Do not allow yourself to be 
made anxious by vain regrets, and by an inces- 
sant longing for change. Every path of life is 
beset less or more with thorns. But being once 
in action, do not stop to hesitate, nor retrace your 
steps ; it is weakness, and failure will be the 
result. To persevere is always good, except when 

G 



siK\ n> i»K].iJ((). 



\ nil :irt' in a w ronji, track ; aiul la* only who has 
liniiiicss to persist in his nndertakin^, can expect 
to attain to distinction in any pursuit of life. 



SECTION XVI. 

ON CHECKING ANXIETY OF MIND. 

There are many wlio persist in the line of life 
they have chosen, and become attached to it, but 
they are enraged when they perceive that higher 
degrees of honour are obtained in some otlier 
career. They are apt to imagine that they have 
not been sufficiently esteemed or remunerated ; 
they are annoyed by the number of their rivals, 
and because all others are not content to own 
their inferiority. 

Never let such sentiments acquire an influ- 
ence over your mind. To encourage them is to 
forfeit tlie share of happiness allotted to you upon 
earth. A man becomes haughty and often ridi- 
culous, in estimating himself more highly than he 
ought to do ; and he is equally unjust in appre- 
ciating those whom he envies at less than their 
real worth. 



CHECKING ANXIETY OF MIND. 63 

It is true that in liuman society merit is not 
always rewarded according to its deserts. He 
who is capable of admirable works, is often too 
modest to bring himself before the public eye, 
and is often also thrown into the shade^ or run 
down by more presuming mxcdiocrity, ambitious 
only to outshine others as a stepping-stone to 
fortune. The world is thus constituted by the 
folly and corruption of mankind ; and there is 
but little hope that it will greatly change in this 
respect. 

Still do not be offended ; it is an evil not to be 
remedied. You may smile, but resign yourself 
to the course of things Impress the salutary 
truth upon your mind, that the important point- 
is^ that you should possess merit; not that you 
are to be recompensed for it by mankind. If 
they should reward you^ it is all well ; if not, 
your merit is the greater, inasmuch as you pre- 
serve it entire beyond the least suspicion of inter- 
est or of worldly views 

Society would be far less evil and corrupt, if 
every one w^ere attentive to restraining his com- 
plaints, and his ambition to outshine. Not that 
I mean he should be negligent of his own fortune, 
in becoming indolent or apathetic— faults in the 



64 SILVIO PKLLICO. 

opposite oxtnijic. I woulil excite within liini an 
ambition, calm, nohlc, and free from invidious- 
ness ; confining it within that sphere, and to those 
especial points, beyond which he is sensible that 
lie cannot advance. lie may at least say with 
landable spirit, 'Mf 1 failed to attain to the loftier 
station of which I believed myself to be worthy, 
I- am yet in the hnmbler one I occnpy, the same 
man, and consequently I possess the same intrin- 
sic merit." 

In fact, it is hardly to be excused that a man 
should disquiet himself to obtain the reward of his 
works, except in so far as it is a necessary object 
for the support of himself and his family. Beyond 
that point of necessity, every augmentation of our 
fortunes ought to be pursued with an easy and 
imperturbable mind. If we succeed, let us give 
thanks to God, who has thus given us the means, 
not only of soothing our own existence, but of 
assisting others. If, on the other hand, we fail 
in our endeavours, we may still live as worthily 
as before, without these aids and appliances ; and 
if in that case we cannot assist others, we have 
nothing to reproach ourselves for in omitting to 
do it, as they have who boast of the means. Do 
all which depends upon yourself to become an 



CHECKING ANXIETY OP MIND. 65 

useful citizen^ to set the example of utility to 
others^ aud leave the consequences to a higher 
power. You may^ indeed, sigh to see the injus- 
tice or the misfortune which surrounds you ; but 
do not on this account become a misanthrope or a 
savage^ nor yet embrace that false philanthropy 
which is worse ; which under pretence of bene- 
fitting mankind^ only thirsts for bloody, and longs 
for the destruction of all worth preservings as the 
most desirable consummation^ much in the same 
spirit as Satan contemplates death. 

He who dislikes the correction of social abuses^ 
as far as it is practicable, is either a villain or 
a fool ; but he who in his desire to remove them 
acts with cruelty, is equally mad or wicked, even 
perhaps in a greater degree. 

Without tranquillity of mind, the larger por- 
tion of the opinions of mankind will be found both 
false and injurious. Tranquillity of mind will of 
itself enable you to suffer without complaining; 
will render you arduous and persevering in your 
labours,— just, indulgent, amiable to 'all around 
vou. 



g2 



SILVIO I'ELLICO. 



SECTION XVII. 



ON IIKPENTANCE AND AMENDMENT. 

Wii I LE recommending y<m to banish inquietude 
of mind, I liavc alluded to your not permitting 
yourself to degenerate^ and principally not to 
relax in the unceasing task of advancing in the 
scale of improvement. 

The man who ventures to say, '* My moral 
education is completed, and my works have 
corroborated it," assuredly deceives himself. It 
is always incumbent upon us to learn how to 
regulate our conduct for each day, and those 
days which are to come ; we are under obligation 
to preserve our virtue invariably on the alert, 
urging us to new actions; and we are equally 
bound to recollect our faults and to repent of 
them. 

On this last subject there is nothing more true 
than that which is advanced by our religion, 
'' that our whole moral life ought to consist of 
one continued repentance, and in endeavours to 
amend our conduct. Christianity itself is nothing 
else." Even \\)ltaire, in one of those lucid inter- 



REPENTANCE AND AMENDMENT. 67 

vais^ when he was not devoured by his rage for 
reviling it, wrote the following words : ^^ Con- 
fession of our faults is an excellent thing ; it is a 
restraint upon crime, and it may be traced to the 
most remote antiquity. In the celebration of the 
ancient mysteries, it was customary for persons to 
confess their offences. We have adopted and 
rendered sacred this wise custom ; it is the best 
of all to lead back hearts corrupted by hatred to 
conciliation and pardon*." How disgraceful,, if 
what is here admitted by Voltaire, should not be 
deeply felt by him who is honoured with the 
title of Christian. Let us listen to the voice of 
conscience. Let us blush for the actions which it 
condemns. Let us confess them before God^, in 
order to purify our hearts ; nor desist from this 
sacred process so long as we are permitted to live. 
If this, moreover, be not done with inattentive 
spirit ; if the sins recounted in the sight of 
heaven be not condemned only with the lips ; if 
repentance be united to a sincere desire of amend- 
ment, there can assuredly be nothing at once 
more salutary, more sublime, more worthy the 
character of man. 

* See Quest. Encicl., book iii. 



OK SILVIO PELLICO. 

When conscious that you have committed any 
w roni!:, (h) not hesitate to repair it. Simply by 
this act you \\ ill set vour conscience at rest. To 
delay making re])aration accustoms the mind, and 
chains it down, to evil^ and the links become each 
day stron»^er, until it begins to lose its usual self- 
respect. And v»'oe to the man wlio has once lost 
his own esteem ; woe to him when he feijrns to 
value himself, while he feels his conscience loaded 
with a mass of putrefaction which ought not to 
exist ) woe to him, also, when, aware of the 
])resence of this corrui)tion of soul, he believes 
that there is nothing left for him to do but to 
disguise it. He no longer retains his station in 
the grade of noble existences ; he is a fallen star, 
a calamity of the creation. 

If some forward youth should call vou poltroon 
because you dare not to persevere in a course of 
iniquity as he does, tell him that he\^ the bravest 
of the brave who can resist the seductions of vice, 
and he the craven who permits himself to be 
vilely dragged along chained at her chariot wheels 
to swell the bad triumph of the hideous en- 
chantress — Sin ; tell him that the arrogance of 
the sinner is false strength, since it is certain that 
on his death-bed — unless raging in delirium — he 



KEPENTANCE AND AMENDMENT. 69 

will lose it all ; and farther, that the strength of 
which you are ambitious is precisely that w^hich 
deigns not to notice ridicule whilst you abandon 
the ' broad and evil way/ for that of virtue and of 
heaven. 

When you have committed an offence, never 
tell a lie in order to deny or extenuate it. Lying 
is a base weakness. Confess that you have done 
wrong ; in that there is some magnanimity ; and 
the shame you will experience in making the con- 
fession will bear fruit in the applause of the good. 
If you have been unfortunate enough to offend 
any one, have the noble humility, that true cri- 
terion of the gentleman, to ask his pardon. Inas- 
much as your conduct will show that you are not 
a poltroon, no one will venture to call you vile for 
an act of frank magnanimity. But to persevere 
in the crime of insulting the innocent, and rather 
than admit your error and retract your words, to 
enter into mortal strife or into eternal enmity 
with the injured, are the mad tricks of proud and 
ferocious men ;— are infamies of so black a dye as 
to make it of some difficulty for the world to veil 
them under the brilliant name of honour. 

There can be no honour except in fulfilling the 
dictates of virtue and the laws of God ; there can 
be none without submitting to the condition of 



70 



SILVIO I'KI.LICO. 



c'oiitinnal ri'j)oiit;iiR(? iiiid rrnowed tletenniuation 
In aiiicnd. 



SECTION XVIII. 

OS CKLIBACY. 

When you have finally decided upon the sort 
of profession Avhicli you judge best adapted to 
your character, and have acquired that firmness 
and pe'S(»verance in good hahits which worthily 
entitle you to the name of man ; then, and not 
before, if you entertain thoughts of marrying, try 
to find such a wife as may merit your entire and 
lasting love. Yet before quitting the state of 
celibacy, reflect long and well if it may not be 
better you should continue to prefer it. 

Suppose, for instance, that you should not so 
far have succeeded in restraining your natural 
tendency to anger, to jealousy, to suspicion, to 
impatience, and the harsh exercise of superiority, 
as to presume that you will appear amiable in the 
eyes of your companion, you had really !)etter have 
fortitude enough to renounce the hopes and bless- 
ings of matrimony. For if, possessing such qua- 
lities, you take a wife, you would be sure to make 
her miserable, and it is ini])ossible that you could 
be happy yourself. 



CELIBACY. 71 

111 case also that you should not meet with a 
person who unites all those qualities you judge 
necessary to satisfy you^ and to bind her affections 
with yours in one^ do not permit yourself to be 
prevailed upon to enter into the bonds of wed- 
lock at all. Your duty is then clearly to re- 
main a bachelor^ much better than to swear to 
maintain a love which you do not really possess. 
But whether it be that you only prolong your 
state of celibacy^ or whether you continue single 
for life^ honour it by such virtues as it pre- 
scribes^ and be duly sensible of the advantages 
it affords. 

That celibacy has its advantages no one can 
deny. Those also peculiar to each of these con- 
ditions ought equally to be appreciated^ for a man 
will otherwise be either unhappy or degraded^ and 
can never possess the courage necessary to act 
with dignity. 

The angry disposition of some men^ added to 
the weight of public opinion, always inclined to 
exaggerate the amount of social abuses^ in order 
the better to correct them^ — often directed atten- 
tion to the scandalous life of several unmarried 
individuals, and hence they proceeded to attack 
celibacy itself as a state opposed to nature^- as 



72 SILVIO PELLICO. 

an enormous evil, and (Jiie of the most power- 
ful causes of the corrnj)tion of public morals. 

Do not, however, permit yourself to be in- 
fluenced by exaggerations of any kind. It is 
but too true tliat gross abuses, connected with 
the state of celibacy, are known to have existed. 
What then ? the same may be observed of every 
state, of every institution, of all bodies, and of 
all members of bodies themselves. You might 
on a similar principle advise men to cut off their 
arms because they may strike ^vith them, or their 
legs because they may kick ; and in this point of 
view arms and legs, like the abuses which obtain 
in the best regulated societies, may be productive 
of very ill consequences. 

Let those who affect to believe the necessary 
evil and immoralities connected with celibacy, take 
also into their calculation the no less numerous 
and more fatal calamities which spring from the 
fruitful source of mercenary or ill-assorted mar- 
riages. But not only this. To the brief period of 
nuptial passion there too often succeeds a feeling 
of regret and trouble at the idea of being no longer 
free ; perhaps, the discovery that we have been 
too precipitate, or that the dispositions are wholly 
at variance. Hence arise mutual regrets and re- 



^ 



CELIBACY. 73 

proaches ; or granting even only one of the parties 
to be in faulty, it is impossible to describe the hourly 
and daily recurring scenes of domestic annoyances^ 
bickerings, and all those little, yet heart-consum- 
ing differences which convert one of the holiest 
and happiest of states into a wretched, torturing 
slavery of souls. Woman, the sweetest and most 
generous of all beings, is usually the victim of this 
unhappy discord of moral elements ; she either 
weeps herself into her grave, or what is still more 
to be deplored, seized with the heart's despair, 
she divests herself of her loveliest and purest 
attributes, she incurs the risk of ignominy and re- 
morse, exposed to passions with which she at 
length seeks to fill up the void which the loss of 
conjugal affection has left in her soul. Turn for a 
moment to the children of these ill-starred mar- 
riages. Their earliest school, the first lessons 
presented to their young minds, is the wretched, 
disgraceful conduct of their parents; they are 
neither loved nor educated in a manner to obviate 
the evil example by which they are first impressed. 
True love, charity, humanity, and right reason 
would be in vain inculcated under such circum- 
stances ; and it follows that they are without 
obedience to their parents, without affection for 

H 



74 SILVIO PELLICO. 

their brethren and kindred, \\itli()ut an ingredient 
of those domestic virtues w liicli are the foundation 
of all civil virtues. 

These too are of such fre([uent occurrence that 
we only require to walk with our eyes open, and 
we must see them. No one will accuse me of 
exaggerating here. Do not suppose that I wish 
to deny the disadvantages connected with celi- 
bacy ; all that I would impress upon you is, 
that you will find, if you reflect, that there are 
others no less formidable ; and beware lest it may 
be your lot to exclaim with innumerable sufferers 
under the self-imposed yoke, '' Oh, would that I 
had never pronounced that one fatal vow ! " To 
be sure, marriage is the destination of a large 
portion of mankind j but celibacy is also grounded 
in the nature of things. To make complaints be- 
cause all are not engaged in adding to the grand 
amount of population, is surely ridiculous. When 
celibacy is preferred upon good grounds, and ob- 
served with honour, there can be nothing ignoble 
in it. On the contrary, it is most deserving of 
respect, like every kind of reasonable sacrifice, 
made with good intentions. By not imposing 
upon yourself the cares of a family, you leave 
yourself more time and greater vigour of mind to 



RESPECT FOR THE FEMALE CHARACTER. 75 

devote to noble studies or to the high offices of 
religion ; you have better means of assisting the 
weaker or more unfortunate members of the 
family ; greater liberty to enjoy that purest of all 
pleasures, the power of rescuing neglected worth 
and indigence from the pangs of despair. 

And^ now, is not the power of doing all this a 
real good? These reflections will not be found 
without their use. For before determining either 
to give up, or to persevere in^ celibacy, it is requi- 
site to ascertain what it is which you thus sacrifice 
or retain. All partial or extreme views^ all strong 
assertions in regard to this subject only tend to 
mislead the judgment. 



SECTION XIX. 

RESPECT FOR THE FEMALE CHARACTER. 

There is a l-ow and jeering kind of cynicism 
which is the essence of vulgarity. It is nothing 
less than a satanic wish to calumniate the hu- 
man race, to seduce it to laugh at virtue and to 
trample it under foot. It is indefatigable in col- 
lecting all facts which tend to dishonour religion, 
and in keeping back those which ennoble it. '' To 



76 SILVIO I'ELLICO. 

talk of (jixl," it exclaims, *' of the benign inHu- 
ence of the ministers of relijj^ion, and the in- 
struction they afford ! All mere chimeras of 
superstition ! " The same bad spirit is equally 
an enemy to ])olitieal institutions. ** What laws, 
what civil order/' it cries out, '* and what patriot- 
ism do you call tliis. It is nothing but the 
struggle of the cunning and the powerful, in the 
party which rules, or that which aspires to rule ;, 
nothing but imbecility in those who obey." In 
the same way it dwells upon every thing deroga- 
tory to celibacy, to the marriage state, to the 
paternal and maternal authority, the duties of 
son, relative, and friend, exclaiming with infa- 
mous exultation, '' Behold, I have discovered that 
every thing is egotism and imposture, sensual 
passion and delusion, and reciprocal contempt." 

This is so far correct, that we invariably find 
that the fruits of such a detestable and false doc- 
trine, are precisely egotism, imposture, violence 
of passion, want of natural atfection, and general 
contempt. 

Is it strange, then, that the base spirit of vul- 
garity, the desecrator of every thing noble, should 
be more especially the enemv of woman's virtues, 
and eager only to degrade her ? In all ages it has 



RESPECT FOR THE FEMALE CHARACTER. 77 

taken a demoniacal pleasure in describing her as 
an abject creature^ inferior in the scale of mind^ 
enviouS;, full of artifice^ inconstant, vain ; inca- 
pable of friendship^ or of incorruptible love. But 
the generous impulses of humanity shielded 
woman from these envenomed shafts. Christ- 
ianity raised her high in character and in worth ; 
banished polygamy and all dishonourable con- 
nexions^ presenting in a woman^ next to our Saviour 
and our Lord;, a being superior to all the saints^ 
and the angels themselves. 

Modern society has benefited by the influence 
of this spirit of grace and love. In the midst of 
barbarism,, knighthood rose and was embellished 
with the elegant charm of love ; and all civilised 
Christians^ the sons of that chivalry^ only esteem^ 
as being polished and educated^ the man who 
respects the sex for its gentleness^ its natural 
graces^ and its domestic virtues. 

Nevertheless her ancient adversary^ envious of 
her noblest qualities^ is still in the world. Would 
he had for his followers minds only of a despicable 
stamp. But at times he corrupts more splendid 
intellects^ and this depravation invariably takes 
place where religion^ which can alone sanctify 
man^ ceases to have influence over his mind. 
H 2 



78 SILVIO PELLICO. 

Some pliilosophrrs, for so at least they called 
themselves, at times affecting zeal for humanity, 
and at others a prey to irreligion, were so mean 
and mistaken as to devote their talents, in various 
arts, to the exhibition of the most dangerous 
passions, to the promulgation of licentious doc- 
trines, or poems and romances of the same excep- 
tionable cast. 

One of the most fascinating of writers, nut 
without good qualities, but immersed in the 
lowest sinks of scurrility and profane wit, — 
I mean Voltaire, — had the hardihood to compose a 
long poem in ridicule of female honour, present- 
ing as an object of scorn one of the most devoted 
heroines of which any country can boast, the 
magnanimous and unfortunate Joan of Arc. Ma- 
dame de Stael justly designates this work, when 
she denounces it as high treason against a whole 
people. 

Hence it follows, that you will always hear tht 
doctrine of contempt for woman from many quar- 
ters ; from men celebrated and obscure ; from 
living authors and dead, even from the shameless 
of her own sex j but in all these the same spirit 
of inherent vulgarity will be found. 

Reject \v ith scorn the infamous temptation to 



THE DIGNITY OF LOVE. 79 

join in the cry ; reject it, you \vho art the son of 
woman^ if you would not be contemptible even in 
your own eyes. Turn from those who do not 
respect in woman the mother they were bound to 
honour. Trample on the books which lower their 
character^ and recommend profligacy. Keep your- 
self worthy, by your noble estimation of the sex, 
to protect her who gave you life, to protect your 
sisters, one day, perhaps, to protect the being who 
shall bear the title of the mother of vour children. 



SECTION XX. 

ON THE DIGNITY OF LOVE. 

Honour woman, but fear the seductions of her 
beauty, and still more the seductions of your own 
heart. 

Happy are you, if you should avoid becoming 
passionately attached to any other than the woman 
whom you have selected for your companion 
through life. 

Preserve yourself free from every tie of love in 1 
preference to bestowing your heart upon a woman 
of little worth. A man of no elevation of mind 
and character might possibly be happy with her ; 



80 SILVIO I'KIAACO. 

Ijut it \s'()iil(l \)i' dtlierw ist,' in your case. You 
would feel the want cither of constant Liberty, 
or of such a C()nii)anion as would correspond with 
the elevated idea you entertain of human nature, 
and especial) V of the female sex. She ought to be 
one of those rare beings, who understand, and 
wlio feel in their noblest sense, the beauty of 
religion and of love. Take care not to array her, 
however, in those brilliant colours of imagination, 
wliich may not be found to exist in the eye of 
sober reason and truth. If you meet with a 
mind like hers ; if you see her animated with a 
sincere love of God, capable of generous enthu- 
siasm in every good work, delicately virtuous 
without prudery ; — an irreconcilable enemy of all 
actions which are not grounded in moral truth ; 
if she unite with these a cultivated intellect with- 
out a love of display, but rather gentle and hum- 
ble as she is accomplished ; if all her words and 
actions breathe a soul of goodness, of graceful 
nature, elevated sentiment, strong devotion to her 
duties, attention to the feelings of others, to con- 
sole the afflicted, to avail herself, in short, of her 
charms to dignify the thoughts of those around 
her ; tlien love and pri?e her with a mighty and 
immortal love, a love all- worthy of such a being. 



THE DIGNITY OF LOVE. 



Sucli a woman^ my young friend^ would also 
be your tutelar angel upon earthy a living ex- 
pression of the divine command to withdraw you 
from every thing unworthy, and to excite you to 
every gentle or noble work. In all your under- 
takings seek to merit her approval ; strive to do 
that for which her lovely mind may delight to 
call you her friend ; be ever glad to honour her^ 
not merely before the world (of little import), but 
at all times, and in the eye of an omniscient God. 

If the object of your regard possess those rich 
gifts, in addition to firm religious faith, your 
exceeding love for her will partake in no way 
of idolatry. You will love her precisely because 
her dispositions are in perfect unison, as far as 
this our imperfect state admits, with those of the 
Deity. By learning to estimate these rightly, you 
will find that your own feelings will become such 
as to approach nearer to Him who is the source of 
all perfection. Imagine it possible for a moment, 
that these heavenly dispositions should undergo a 
gradual change, you would no longer esteem her, 
and the charm of love would be at an end. 

I am aware that this noblest of all love is held 
to be chimerical by vulgar minds ; by all such as 
can form no idea of the true dignity of woman. 



82 .SIL\IO i'KLLICO. 

You have only to compassionate their low grade of 
knowledge. Attachments the most pure, and 
])o\verfully inliuential in exciting to virtne, how- 
ever rare, are known to exist. And every man 
who estimates riglitly liis own liappiness, ought to 
exchiini, '^ Eitlier give me such a hjve or none." 



SECTION XXI. 

ON DISREPUTABLE ATTACHMENTS. 

But be upon your guard, I warn you, not to 
attribute any of these admirable virtues to a 
woman who does not possess them. In that case, 
it is what is termed mere romantic love ; it is 
ridiculous and prejudicial ; it is an unwortliy 
offering of the lieart at the feet of a vain idol. 

But women worthy of the highest degree of 
estimation do actually exist ; though not in so 
large a number as those whom education, bad ex- 
amples, or their own levity have corrupted ; those 
who are incapable even of estimating the value of 
a good mans vows : those who take more debVht 
in being followed for their beauty and liveliness 
of spirit, than in deserving real love by the noble- 
ness of tlieir sentiments. 



DISREPUTABLE ATTACHMENTS. od 

i It is women of this imperfect character who 
are the most dangerous^ — more dangerous and 
seductive than they who are wholly abandoned. 
They attract you not only by their natural grace 
and studied arts^ but often by the display of some 
virtue^ exciting hope that the good may prevail 
over the worse parts of their character. Do not 
indulge this hope^, especially if you see them vain, 
or guilty of indiscretion. Exercise a severe 
judgment J not to speak ill of them, or to exagge- 
rate their faults, but to withdraw from their 
fascination in time^ if you apprehend that you 

I are likely to get entangled in a connexion little 
honourable to you. The more susceptibility you 
happen to possess^ and the more disposed to honour 
excellence in woman,, so much the more ought 
you to lay down a rule not to rest satisfied with 
mere ordinary good qualities in her to whom you 
wish to give the title of a friend. 

You must make your account^ in so doing, to 
be reviled by the profligate, and all of that set who 
will doubtless call you ridiculous, haughty, un- 
man nered, and hypocritical. Take care that you 
are none of these, and never consent to prostitute 
your affections ; keep your heart free^ or yield its 
homage only to a woman who can lay full claim to 
vour esteem. 



84 SILVIO VElAACi). 

He ^vllo loves a noble-iniiidt'd woiimn will never 
lose his time in servile courtesies, in offering her 
adulation or the tribute of idle sighs. Such a 
being would not suffer them. She would feel 
ashamed of having a mere idle smooth-faced flat- 
terer for her lover ; she would appreciate only the 
friendship of a frank dignified character, less eager 
to talk to her of love, than to gratify her with 
laudable principles and actions corresponding with 
them. 

The woman who can tolerate the puerile sub- 
mission of a lover, resigned to her every caprice, 
perpetually engaged in affected courtesies and 
silly grimaces, discovers at once the little estima- 
tion in which she holds both him and herself 
The man too, who can amuse himself in thi- 
way, who has no generous ambition in his love, 
no desire to render homage to some high qualities, 
despicable in his understanding, more despicable 
of hearts will never possess sutlicient energy to be 
of the least use to the world. I do not here speak 
of women of abandoned character ; a virtuous 
man beholds them only with compassion or aver- 
sion ; and not to avoid them is disgraceful in the 
extreme. 

When once a woman shall have appeared wortliy 
of your love, be above giving way to jealousies, to 



Respect for daughters and wives. 85 

suspicion, or to a mistaken desire of being idolised 
to an excess. 

Be devoted to her in order to be just ; show her 
all that gentle courtesy^ all that admiration felt 
to be due to uncommon merit. Do this also in 
order to raise yourself in the eyes of her who 
holds the highest rank in your estimation, not 
that it may excite her love for you to a greater 
degree than she has it in her power to evince. 

Jealous men and passionate men who imagine 
that they are never sufficiently beloved, are real 
tyrants. Rather than be guilty of this conduct 
for the sake of any pleasure, it is preferable to re- 
nounce that pleasure altogether ; and rather than 
become a tyrant, or be betrayed into any other 
species of indignity from love, pluck it out of your 
heart, and cast it from you. 



SECTION XXII. 

RESPECT FOR THE DAUGHTERS AND WIVES OF 
OTHERS. 

Whether you determine to remain a bachelor 
or to marry, show uniform respect for the laws 
enjoined by either state. 



86 SILVIO PELLICO. 

There is nothing more delicate than the inno- 
cence and the reputation of young women ; do 
not allow yourself to take the slightest liberty 
with them, either in regard to manner or words, 
so as to bring the most distant idea of impropriety 
or profanity to their minds, the slightest emotion 
to the heart. As little permit yourself, whether 
in a young girl's company or elsewhere, the least 
allusion calculated to give another an impression 
that she has any levity of disposition, or would 
easily be induced to love. The sense of what is 
decorous may suffer from any trivial appearances, 
a very little may excite the tongue of calumny 
against her, and she may then be deprived of the 
power of forming some matrimonial engagement 
which might have rendered her happy. Should 
you conceive a deep and passionate attachment 
for a young creature without being enabled to 
offer her your hand, by no means acquaint her 
with it, but make it a principle to conceal it with 
every possible care. Were she to know it, the 
passion might become mutual, and she would 
hence, perhaps, become a victim to disappointed 
love. 

If you should discover that you have awakened 
the affections of a younsc girl, whom either you 



RESPECT FOR DAUGHTERS AND WIVES. 87 

wish not to espouse or are prevented by circum- 
stances^ show equal consideration for her peace 
and her character ; cease altogether from seeing 
her. To derive pleasure from exciting passion in 
the bosom of an innocent being which can be 
productive only of affliction and of shame^ is the 
most cruel and wicked of all vanities. 

No less precaution is necessary in your inter- 
course with married women. A mad and mis- 
placed passion on your side^ or on the part of one 
who has already pledged her vows^ might lay the 
foundation for irretrievable ignominy and misfor- 
tune. You would lose indeed less than she must ; 
but exactly in proportion to the greater sacrifice 
by a woman who exposes herself at once to the 
contempt of her husband and her own remorse, 
you, if you have the least generosity, will feel for 
her, and restrain yourself from rushing headlong 
into destruction. No ! terminate while yet in 
time, a love which both the voice of God and that 
of the laws condemn. 

Your hearts, indeed, may bleed in the bitterness 
of a last parting, but be firm ; virtue requires 
immense sacrifices ; he who cannot make them is 
a coward in soul. 

Between a married woman and a man who has 



88 SILVIO TKLLICO. 

not entered into tluit state, there can subsist no 
intimate relation l)eyoncl that of emulation in 
tlieir mutual esteem, founded upon a knowledge 
of each others' virtues, upon a persuasion that 
there existed on both sides, previous to every other 
attacliment^ a well grounded love of their resj)ec- 
tive duties. 

But turn with abhorrence from the extreme im- 
morality of seducing the affections of another's 
wife. If he be deserving of her love, your perfidy 
is, indeed, ail atrocious crime: if not estimable, 
liis faults can never authorise you to degrade the 
unhappy one wlio is still his wife. She has no 
alternative ; it is her duty to bear with him, to 
be faithful to him, and resign herself to the will 
of God. It is cruel egotism in the man who, 
under pretext of love or compassion, draws her 
into iiuilt. Even if his motives were kind and 
charitable, it is a wretched delusion— a fatal 
error — U) imagine he can do any good. To be- 
come attached to you can only augment her 
miserv : you renew the anguish of her heart, in 
being united to a bad husband, in proportion as 
she loves you, and compares your merits with the 
ill qualities (►f her husband, whom she feels bound 
in duty to honour and obey. You may rouse the 



RESPECT FOR DAUGHTERS AND WIVES. 89 

hell of jealousy in the bosom of that husband^— 
you may render her an object of his vengeance^ with 
the bitter consciousness that she is guilty, and has 
merited her fate. Woman, in an ill-assorted mar- 
riage^ can alone ^obtain ^peace by preserving the 
most irreproachable conduct. He who holds out to 
her the hope of any other peace^ deceives her, and 
opens the way for sorrows of a still darker hue. 

With regard to women whom you have reason 
to respect for their virtues^ equally with the young 
and unmarried of their sex^ be noble and generous 
enough not to give them the slightest grounds of 
injurious suspicions of you from the circumstance 
of your friendship with them. Be circumspect 
with regard^to the manner in which you speak of 
them to men accustomed to form a low estimate 
of female virtue. Their suppositions and in- 
ferences are invariably in keeping with the per- 
versity of their hearts. Unfaithful interpreters 
of what they hear^, they put a bad construction on 
the simplest words^ — distort the most innocent 
facts, and make a mystery, and even an indis- 
cretion, where they were not in existence. Too 
much care cannot be taken to preserve w^oman's 
reputation untouched : tjjis fair fame,, next to 
intrinsic chastity itself, is the brightest jewel in 
i2 



90 SILVIO PELLICO. 

her crown : she who liath lost it, is invariably 
most cantious of concealing the fact ; and he who 
has the baseness to take a pleasure in leading 
others to su{)pose that a woman entertains an im- 
proper regard for liim, is so utterly unworthy in 
every point of view, as to deserve to be unani- 
mously expelled from all good society. 



SECTION XXIII. 

ON MATRIMONY. 

If your inclinations and your circumstances are 
such as to induce you to think of marriage, lead 
the companion of your future days to the altar 
with high and holy thoughts, and with a fixed 
determination to make her happy. Reflect on 
the immense confidence she reposes in you, that 
she abandons the parental roof, and changes her 
name to assume yours, preferring you alone to 
every thing she had held so dear until she knew 
you, — you, through whom she may become the 
mother of other intelligent beings, called to the 
same participation in the promises of the iMost 
High as yourselves. How humiliating and mor- 
tifying the contemplation of human inconsistency » 



MATRIMONY. 91 

The greater portion of those who now clasp each 
others' hands with willing vows of connubial love^, 
binding themselves by a solemn compact to pre- 
serve them unbroken till deaths shall^ within 
the space of two years^ nay^ within a few short 
months, — not only lose each others' affections, 
but with difficulty bear one another's company, 
-^full of mutual reproaches and accusations of 
every kind. Whence this fertile source of evil ? 
The want of a proper knowledge of each others' 
characters previous to taking so important a step. 
Be cautious, study and prove, if possible, the 
good qualities of the beloved object, or you are 
lost. Since the cessation of love is chiefly owing 
to yielding to the temptations of inconstancy, 
from want of recalling to mind the sacredness of 
the union which you have formed, make it your 
dail) habit to repeat within yourself, " I will and 
ought to keep my promise : honesty and honour 
exact it." Here, as in other circumstances of life, 
beware of the natural facility with which mankind 
fall into evil ; reflect that it is want of firmness of 
will which renders them despicable ; that this is 
the fruitful source of so many of the crimes and 
calamities which afflict human society. 

The sole condition upon which connubial life 



92 SILVIO I'ELLICO. 

can Ix' rciKh'rcd liiij)|)\ , is lliat cacli of the parties 
slioiild lay it (Inwii as their primary duty, A\'ith 
uiialterahh' resolution : " I will iiivarial)ly love 
and honour the heart to whieh I yielded an as- 
cendaney over my own." If the ehoice were good, 
if one of the two were not already eorruj)ted, — it 
is impossible that either should become ungrateful 
and perverse, while the other perseveres in its 
pleasing intentions and generous love. There is 
not, I believe, a single instance of a husband who 
liaving once possessed the affections of his wife, 
has ceased to be dear to her, unless he have been 
guilty of the most shameful ill-usage, marked 
neglect, or of other vices yet more to be dej)lored. 
A\'onian's disposition is naturally affectionate, 
grateful, and disposed to love to an excess the man 
Avho returns her love and deserves her esteem. 
But inasmuchas she is susceptible, she is easily 
excited by any want of amiableness in her hus- 
band, and by such faults as may tend to degrade 
him. Her indignation, if well-grounded, may at 
lenuth assume the character of invincible anti- 
patliy, and consequently lead to the most fatal 
errors. The unhappy one will then doubtless 
become guilty ; but the cause of her transgressions 
is assureulv to be sou«ilil in lier husband. 



MATRIMONY. 93 

Impress tliis persuasion thoroughly upon your 
mind : ^^ No woman possessed of good qualities 
when she first stood before the altar^ loses those 
qualities in companionship with him who con- 
tinues to preserve a right to her affections." 

In order to secure a lasting claim to your wife's 
attachment, it is necessary you should lose nothing 
of your importance in her eyes ; that your con- 
jugal intercourse should detract in no way from 
the reverence and courtesy which you evinced 
before you first led her to the altar. It is equally 
necessary you should show no weak compliance or 
submission^ such as to make you incapable of cor- 
recting her ; and as little should you let her feel 
your despotic authority^ and the severity of your 
correction^ but let her have reason to form a high 
opinion of your judgment and good feeling in all 
you do. To be happy, she ought to take pride in 
her dependence upon you ; not that it is to 
be haughtily imposed upon her, but rather invited 
by her love, by a strong feeling of her own true 
dignity, and of yours. 

Though you should have made an admirable 
choice in a woman endowed with all her sex's 
virtues and attractions, do not the less cease from 
a constant attention to make yourself appear 



94 Jsll.VK^ I'KLLHO. 

amiable in her eyes. Do not ungenerously say, 
*' I know she is so excellent, that she will forgive 
all my faults ; I am sure I need not study to 
preserve her affections ; she always loves me 
equally well !" 

What ! and because such is the extent of her 
ineffable goodness, you will be less desirous of 
pleaiiing her? Do not delude yourself; just in 
proportion as her sensibility is exquisitely alive to 
your manners, will any want of attention, inele- 
gance, or ill-temper, be sure to afflict her. In 
proportion to the superior gentleness of her senti- 
ments and manners, will be her desire to feel a 
corresponding kindness on your part. If she 
should be disappointed ; if she sees a harsh change 
in your conduct, from the seductive courtesy of 
the lover to the insulting neglect of a bad hus- 
band, she will still exert herself to the utmost to 
love you, in spite of all your unworthiness, but the 
effort will be in vain. She will pardon, but she 
will cease to love you, and will be unhappy. Woe 
to you, then, if her virtue stand not the test, and 
another lover were to occupy her vacant heart. She 
miglit become a prey to the guiltiest of passions — 
a passion fatal to her peace, to that of yourself 
and the whole of vour familv- 



PATERNAL LOVE, ETC. 95 

Many husbands have been shipwrecked on this 
rock, and yet the wives whom they have execrated 
with their last breath were virtuous. Their 
wretched hearts were only led astray, because 
they were no longer beloved ; because their con- 
sorts first deviated from the path of rectitude and 
honour. 

Having once given a woman the sacred title of 
wife^ devote yourself to her happiness^ as she is 
bound to add to yours ; but the obligation you 
labour under is the greater^ inasmuch as she is 
the weaker of the two. You being her guide and 
friend^ .ought to protect and afford her the benefit 
of your good example, and all the aid in your 
power. 

SECTION XXIV. 

ON PATERNAL LOVE LOVE OF CHILDREN 

AND YOUTH. 

To present the valuable gift of 'good citizens to 
your country, and to the Deity spirits worthy of 
him, will be your duty should you possess sons. 
A sublime duty ! He who takes it upon him, and 
deserts his trust, is the greatest of enemies to his 
country and his God. It is not requisite that I 



96 SILVIO I'KLLICO. 

should enumerate the good qualities of a father; 
you will possess them all if vou have been a good 
son and a good husband. 15ad fathers are inva- 
riably such as have been bad, ungrateful sons, and 
ignoble husbands. 

Before, however, you become the father of a 
family — even should you never assume that re- 
sponsibility — soften and improve your mind with 
the delightful sentiment of paternal love. Every 
man ought to foster it, and keep it alive by 
directing it towards all children and all young 
people. 

Contemplate with exceeding Jove that rising 
portion of society, and treat it with becoming 
reverence. 

Every one who unjustly contemns or afflicts 
childhood, if he be not corrupt, will become cor- 
rupted. A man who is not most solicitous to 
show respect for the innocence of a child, — to 
warn him of evil, to keep strict watch that he is 
not infected with it by communication with others, 
and to incite him to virtue, may be the cause of 
that child becoming a monster of iniquity. But 
why attempt to substitute words far less effective 
than those terrible, yet most sacred ones, used by 
that adorable friend of children, our Redeemer 



PATERNAL LOVE, ETC. 97 

'^ He who receives one of these in my name, 
receives me. But he who shall hurt one of the 
least of these little ones who believe in me, better 
had it been for him that he had hung a mill- 
stone round his neck, and thrown himself into 
the midst of the sea V 

Those who are much younger than you are, and 
upon whom your example and advice may produce 
the most beneficial effects, consider always in 
the light of your offspring ; treat them with that 
mingled indulgence and zeal which are calculated 
to dissuade them from evil and impel them to 
what is good. Infancy is naturally imitative ; 
and if the adults who surround a child are pious, 
dignified, and amiable, the boy will gradually 
desire to become such as they are, and such he 
will be. If on the other hand they are irreligious, 
mean, or malevolent, the boy will become equally 
bad with themselves. 

Even in regard to boys and young men whom you 
only casually meet, and may never have a further 
opportunity of speaking to during life, still show 
them that you are good ; and should it occur, try 
to impress some useful truth upon their young 
minds, which may bear fruits of future good. 
One zealous word, one look of genuine affection 

K 



98 SILVIO I'KLLKO. 

may serve to withdraw thcni from some mean 
thoughts or low pursuits, and inspire them with a 
wish to deserve the esteem of good men. 

If some youth of noble promise should seek 
your confidence, act towards him like a generous 
friend ; assist him with upright and decided 
counsel ; beware of flattering him ; applaud sucIj 
of his actions as appear laudable, and restrain him 
from those of an opposite kind, with warm appeals 
to all his better feelings. 

Again, if you see a young man prone to vicious 
pursuits, with whom you have little or no ac- 
quaintance, do not on that account refuse to 
stretch forth a saving hand, should an occasion 
occur of rescuing him from destruction, ^^erv 
frequently the thoughtless youth who enters upon 
a dissipated career, requires only a word, a look, 
or an example, applied in season, to confess his 
error with shame, and retrace his steps; and then 
how enviable must be your feelings ! 

What ! you may ask, should be the moral edu- 
cation you ought to give your sons ? My answer 
is, that you would not comprehend it if you hav. 
not yourself experienced its routine. Acquire, 
and vou will then bo rnal)lod to confer it. 



UPON RICHES. 99 



SECTION XXV. 



UPON KICHES. 



Religion and philosophy both agree in ap- 
plauding poverty when united to virtue ; and 
greatly prefer it to insatiable and reckless love of 
riches. At the same time^, they admit that a man 
may be wealthy and yet be possessed of merit 
equal to that of the best and noblest who are poor. 
All that is incumbent upon him is^ that he should 
not be a slave to his riches ; that he should not 
procure nor hoard them for any ill purpose ; and 
that he should desire to apply them only to the 
improvement and benefit of his fellow-creatures. 
Learn to respect all professions;, all conditions^, 
embracing also the wealthy, as connected with 
humanity ; for their prosperity must necessarily 
tend to the benefit of many, provided, indeed, 
that luxury and pomp should not make them 
indolent and haughty. 

You will most probably continue in the condi- 
tion in which you were born ; removed from 
excessive opulence as well as from penury. Never 



loo SILVIO I'KLLICO. 

stoop ho low as to be infected by that low envy — 
that hatred of superiors, so often indulged by the 
less wealthy and the poor. It is a hatred which as- 
sun\es the gravity of philosophical language ; deals 
in warm declanuition against pomp and luxury; 
against the injustice of disproportioned fortune; 
against the arrogance of successful power ; it is, 
apparently, a magnanimous thirst after equality, 
and redress for the many wrongs and sufferings of 
humanity. Let not this doctrine delude you, 
though you hear it from the lips of men of some 
repute, and read it in a hundred loud and eloquent 
appeals, calculated to win popular applause, by 
flattering the people's passions. In these violent 
tirades you will always find more envy, ignorance, 
and calumny than zeal for a just cause. 

Inequality of fortunes is inevitable, and good 
as well as evil is the result. He who execrates 
the rich man would willingly put himself in his 
place ; and let the former, therefore, do the best 
he can to keep possession of it. Among the very 
wealthy, there are few who do not scatter their 
wealth around them ; and in this way tliey become, 
through a thousand channels, with more or less 
merit, and sometimes none at all — the great co- 
o2)erators in the public good. They give life to 



UPON RICHES. 101 

coniiiiercO;, to the cultivation of taste^ to emulation 
in the arts^^ — and to the innumerable hopes of those 
who struggle to f!y from penury by means of un- 
ceasing industry. 

Be above the prejudice of beholding in them only 
the representatives of indolence, luxury, inutility ; 
— for the idea is merely a ridiculous caricature. If 
gold enervates some, it impels others to noble ac- 
tions. There is not a civilised city in the world 
where the rich liave not founded institutions of the 
most beneficent character; not a place where they 
are not, both individually and associated, the 
friends of humanity — the supporters of the 
wretched. Look upon them, then, without anger 
and without envy, — scorning to repe/irthe mis- 
taken sentimentsof the people. Never deport your- 
self towards them either with disdain or servility, 
inasmuch as you would not like to be thus treated 
by men less wealthy than yourself. 

Show a wise economy according to the means of 
fortune you possess; avoid equally that avarice 
which hardens the heart and contracts the intellect; 
and the prodigality which leads to disgraceful obli- 
gations and to difficulties and sacrifices unworthy 
of you. 

To endeavour to augment your fortune is per- 
k2 



\i>:i SILVIO VIA.IACO, 

fectly right ; but tlo it without eagerness ami 
grasping. Indulge no excessive anxiety ; and never 
forget that true hoiinur :ui(l real happiness de|)eii(l 
not uj)on the amount of your rent-roll, but upon 
your excellence and dignity of mind in councxiou 
with God and your neighbour. 

If successful, let your beneficence keep pace 
with your f(»rtune. The rich man may possess 
many virtues ; but to be a rich egotist — a monopo- 
list in heart and spirit — is wickedness in tlie 
extreme. Refuse not to assist the wretched; but 
do not confine your alms to this object: great and 
distinguished charity consists in providing the poor 
with some more honest means of subsistence than 
asking alms ; — I mean by bestowing upon the 
different arts, botli useful and ornamental, that en- 
couragement \\'hicli will bring labour and bread. 

Consider, at times, that some unforeseen event 
may deprive you of your family fortunes, and even 
consign you to misery and want. Too many 
strange vicissitudes have taken place before our 
eyes for any rich man to venture to assert — '* 1 
shall never die in exile, and in misfortune !" 

Enjoy your wealth with that noble indepen- 
dence of its power, which the pliilosophers of th 
church, Nvith the gospel; call — poorness of spirit. 



UPON RICHES. 103 

Voltaire, in his scurrilous mood^ affected to believe 
that the poor hi spirit, so much recommended by 
the gospel^ was mere folly. On the contrary^ it is 
the virtue^ the courage^ to maintain^ even amidst 
riches^ — a humble spirit, — -not the enemy of 
poverty^ — not unable to bear it should it comej— 
not incapable of respecting it in others. This is 
virtue requiring something more than mere folly, — 
virtue only to be found united with wisdom and 
elevation of mind. 

^^ Are you desirous to cultivate your mind ? " 
says Seneca: ^^ live the life of a poor man^ or as if 
you were one." 

In the event of your falling into misfortune, do 
not lose courage. Labour in order to live^ and 
never be ashamed of such independence. A man 
in actual want may be as estimable a character as 
he who relieves him. But you must then learn 
how to renounce with a good grace the habits 
acquired in a state of prosperity; scorn to present 
the ludicrous and wretched spectacle of a poor 
proud man. A dignified humility^ strict economy, 
patience invincible by labour, gentle serenity of 
mind, proof against all evil fortune, will render you 
one of the noblest^ if not the happiest of men. 



KM SILVIO I'LI.LICO. 



SECTION XX \ I. 

ON UKSTKCT J)IJE TO MISFORTUNE, AND <>N 
IJKNKFICENCE. 

Honour be to all honest conditions of liunian 
life, and to that of honest poverty among the rest. 
Let the poor only turn their misfortunes to the 
improvement of themselves 3 let them presume 
not to think that suffering authorises them to com- 
mit crimes, or to foster hatred; and thev cannot be 
wholly unhappy. 

Never however under any circumstances ought 
we to be severe in our judgment of them. Have 
deep compassion upon the really poor, although they 
arc often goaded by impatience even to rage. Con- 
sider how hard a thing it is to suffer extreme want 
on the higliway or in the hovel, while within a 
few steps the wretched man beholds his fellow- 
creatures, splendidly arrayed and daintily fed, pass 
b} him. Forgive him, if he have the weakness to 
regard you with malice, and relieve his wants 
because he is a man. 

Always respect misfortune, in the various shapes 
it is know n to a>.-unie. The arrows of calamity do 



RESPECT DUE TO MISFORTUNE, ETC. 105 

not rankle only in the bosom of indigence ; suc- 
cour also those who sorrow^ and who are not in 
absolute want, even though they should not so- 
licit you. 

Every one who lives by his labour, without the 
elegancies of life, and in an inferior station, has yet 
a claim upon your affectionate compassion. Do 
not by your arrogance of manner make him feel 
the distinction between your fortunes. Humiliate 
him not with harsh language, though he should 
happen to displease you by some want of polish, 
or other defect. 

Nothing is so truly consolatory to the unhappy 
as to find himself treated with affectionate regard 
by his superiors : his heart swells with gratitude ; 
he then for the first time perceives why the rich 
should be rich, and he forgives them for their 
prosperity, because he considers them worthy of it. 

Domineering and brutal masters, on the other 
hand, are invariably hated by their domestics, 
however well they may reward their services. 

Now, to make yourself hated by your inferiors 
is a great want of morality ; firstly, because you 
are a bad man yourself ; secondly, because instead 
of relieving their afflictions, you increase them ; 



10() ML\ lu rij.Lico. 

thirdly, hccausc you accustom them to serve y^u 
clish>yally, to hate dependence, and to execrate the 
whole body of society more fortunate than them- 
selves. And as it is just that all should enjoy as 
mucli hap])iness as is possible, lie who ranks in 
a higher station should procure his inferiors such 
a degree of comfort as not to make their con- 
dition galling to them ; but rather to become 
attached to it, because they see it is not de- 
sj)ised, and is rendered easier by the rich. 

Be lil)eral in every kind of succour to those 
who require it : in money and protection when 
you can ; in giving counsel, in seasonable oppor- 
tunities, and always in good manners and good 
examples. 

But, principally, if you discover merit, devote 
your whole power and influence to bringing it 
into notice ; but if you possess not the means, do 
all you can to console and to honour it. To blush 
for showing your esteem for honesty in misfortune 
is tlie most unworthy kind of meanness. Yet you 
will find it but too common ; and use all your 
vigilance nut to allow yourself to l)e infected by it. 

When a n^.an is unhappy, most people are in- 
clined to do him A\Tong, and to suj)pose that his 



RESPECT DUE TO MISFORTUNE, ETC. 107 

enemies have some cause for running him down or 
annoying him. If they assail him with calumny, 
in order to justify their conduct, though it consist 
of the most improbable of accusations, it will be 
received and cruelly disseminated. The few who 
have the resolution to refute it are seldom listened 
to. It seems as if the greater portion of mankind 
were always happy when they are able to believe 
in something or other bad. 

But hold in horror this wretched and degrading 
tendency. Whenever accusations are preferred, do 
not you disdain to hear a defence. And if no de- 
fence should be set up, be generous enough to 
imagine there may be some, and to state what ap- 
pears probable to you. Do not give ear to incul- 
pation, except where it is m.anifestly well-founded ; 
but reflect at the same time that they who hate 
others assume that to be manifest which does not 
even exist. If you would be just, hate no one ; 
the justice of malignant people is the rage of the 
Pharisees. 

From the moment misfortune has fallen upon 
any one, were he your enemy, were he the devas- 
tator of your country, it is base to regard his 
misery with insulting triumph. If occasion should 



108 SILVIO PELLICO. 

orter, speak to liiin of his faults, but with less 
vehemence than during the period of his pros- 
perity ; speak of tlieni with religious attention, 
but not to exaggerate them, not to separate them 
from the good qualities ^\hich distinguished him. 

Compassion for the unhappy is always noble, 
even when applied to the guilty. The law has a 
right to condemn them ; but man has not a right 
to exult in their misfortune, nor to describe them 
in colours darker than the truth. 

The habit of showing compassion will at times 
make you lenient even towards the ungrateful. Do 
not presume from part that all are ungrateful ; and 
do not cease to do good. Among many ungrateful 
some one of opposite feelings may be found worthy 
of all your beneficence. These ungrateful, then, 
are the cause of your liaving dispensed your bounty 
so well in this instance ; and his benedictions will 
repay you ten-fold for the rest. 

Moreover, if you should meet only with ingrati- 
tude, the goodness of your own heart will be a suf- 
ficient reward. 

There is no greater pleasure than that of suc- 
couring the wretched, and it is one of the few 
pleasures which, increasing by gratification, par- 



I 



RESPECT DUE TO MISFORTUNE, ETC. 109 

takes of no alloy. It far exceeds that of receiving 
help; because in receiving it there is no virtue^ 
while in giving there is muche 

In the act of doing good^ show a delicacy towards 
all, in particular with regard to persons of the 
more respectable class, sensitive and virtuous 
women, and those who are newly initiated in the 
harsh school of poverty ; who often shed in secret 
their bitter tears rather than dare to utter the 
agonising words, ^^ I am in want of bread ! *' 

Besides what you give in private without the 
^^one hand knowing that which the other does,'' 
unite your means with those of other generous 
minds for the purpose of enlarging your sphere of 
usefulness, founding good institutions, and pre- 
serving those which exist. 

We have made use of one expression of scripture ; 
another of no less authority is this : ^^ Take ye care 
that you do good not only before God, but in the 
face of all men*/' 

There are many objects which no individual can 
effect, and which cannot be accomplished in secret. 
Attach yourself to benevolent societies ; try to 
promote them, to re-invigorate them, and to reform 

* Epist. Paul to the Romans, c. xii. 
L 



I lO SILVIO PELLK'O. 

tlicin in case of need. Xovit relax your eiforts on 
account of the attacks of idle ridicule, of the ava- 
ricious, or tlie useless; ''those nati consumcre 
Jru^cs^^ always eager to undervalue the lal>ours of 
energetic minds for the good of humanity. 



SECTION XXVIl. 

ON THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE. 

In case that your business or domestic avoca- 
tions should leave you little time to devote to 
books, do not fall into the vulgar habit so preva- 
lent among those who seldom or never study ; — 
that is, to abhor all knowledge which they have 
not themselves acquired ; to laugh at all those 
who value intellectual cultivation ; and to stick 
fast by ignorance as a kind of social good. 
. Despise false knowledge ; it is bad ; but appre- 
ciate real knowledge as you ought, for it is both 
ennobling and useful. Esteem it, whether you 
have had opportunities of proving its excellence 
or not. 

Be ever eager to improve yourself, either by 
persevering in the cultivation of some one science. 



ON THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE. Ill 

or by reading good books on a variety of subjects. 
To a man of respectable station such intellectual 
exercise is of great use; not only for the pure 
pleasure and the instruction which he derives 
from it^ but having the reputation of taste^, and a 
love of learning;, he will possess superior influence 
in urging others to pursue the same good path. 
Envy is always busy in casting discredit upon an 
upright man^ if it can lay hold of any reason or 
pretext to call him ignorant_, or the promoter of 
ignorance^ so that his best actions are looked upon 
by the people with a malignant eye^ being either 
denied or run down with all their power. The 
cause of religion^ of our country^, and of honour, 
requires bold champions ; of virtuous intentions 
in the first place, and next of wisdom and modera- 
tion. Woe to us, where the evil-minded can say 
with justice to men of merit, ^^ You have not 
studied, you are rude and uncultivated/' 

But to obtain reputation as a wise man, never 
pretend to knowledge you do not actually possess. 
All species of imposture are disgraceful ; and even 
the ostentation of knowing that which you are 
perfectly sensible you do not know. Besides, 
there is no impostor who must not, sooner or later, 
drop the mask, audit is then over with him. But 



112 SILVIO PELLICO. 

however highly we are bound to estimate know- 
ledge^ we ought not to be idolators at its shrine. 
We may desire to possess it;, and to impart it to 
others ; but if we are enabled to acquire only a 
little, let us be content, and show frankly how 
much we really know. Great variety of know- 
ledge is a good thing, but virtue is eventually of 
still greater importance; and owing to fortune, 
the latter is susceptible of being united with 
ignorance. 

For this reason, if you know much, you will 
not despise the ignorant. Knowledge is like 
wealth, desirable in order to assist others ; but he 
who has it not, being still able to make a good 
citizen, boasts a title to our respect. Diffuse en- 
lightened thoughts among the less educated classes. 
But in what do these consist? Not those tending 
to produce a disputatious, sententious, and malig- 
nant people ; not those violent declamations so 
much extolled in plays and romances, and in which 
the lowest rabble are made heroes, the better 
orders described as villains, and in which the 
whole face of society is caricatured in order to 
excite abhorrence ; where the virtuous cobbler is 
selected to say insolent things to his lordship, 
while his virtuous lordship espouses the daughter ^ 



ON COURTESY. 113 

of the cobbler^ and where even cut-throats are 
represented as admirable, in order to throw odium 
on him who will not admire them. 

The truly enlightened views calculated for 
diffusion among the lower classes^ are such as 
tend to preserve them from error and exaggera- 
tion ; those which^ without asking them to become 
blind votaries of him who knows and is able to 
do more than themselves^ impress upon them a 
noble disposition towards courtesy, towards bene- 
volence and gratitude ; views which may withdraw 
them from all excited and mad ideas of anarchy 
and plebeian government; teach them to exercise 
with pious dignity the obscure but honourable 
duties which Providence has assigned them ; and 
convince them that social distinctions are neces- 
sary, although if we be equally virtuous, we shall 
finally reap equal reward for our actions at the 
hands of God. 



SECTION XVIIL 

ON COURTESY. 

Always preserve a courteous demeanour in 
your general intercourse with society. In addition 
l2 



114 SILVIO PELLICO. 

to the attraction of agreeable manners^ it will teach 
you to regard and esteem others. He who assumes 
rude^ suspicious, haughty airs, is disposed to im- 
bibe ill opinions of those around him. Want of 
courtesy is thus the source of two evils ; — that of 
deteriorating the mind of him who exhibits it, and 
that of offending or grieving his neighbour. 

But do not only study to display gentleness of 
manner ; let the same spirit of courtesy inspire all 
your thoughts, all your wishes, and all your 
affections. 

He who is not careful to preserve his mind from 
all ignoble ideas, is often tempted by their frequent 
indulgence, to proceed to blamable actions. 

You will hear persons not belonging to a low 
rank in life in the habit of using loose jests, and 
very improper language ; but do not imitate them : 
let your language be at once free from over-refined 
delicacy, and from all mean vulgarity; never 
sinking so low as to employ those brutal, unmean- 
ing exclamations with which the uneducated are 
accustomed to intersperse their discourse, or those 
scurrilous and often impious jeers so offensive in 
every way to good manners. Purity, simplicity, 
and beauty of language, however, ought to be 
imbibed into the mijtid and heart, even from early 



ON COURTESY. 115 

youth. He, who possesses it not at twenty-five 
years of age, must remain a stranger to it. It does 
not consist^ I repeat^ in set and pretty phrases^ 
but in high thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy ; 
in frank and dignified expressions^ producing in 
the minds of others feelings of delightful sympathy^ 
solace^ joy, henevolence, and a warmer love of 
virtue. Leave no means unstudied to render the 
style of your conversation agreeable, by a happy 
selection of expressions, and an appropriate modu- 
lation of voice. An elegant speaker charms the 
ear as well as the minds of his listeners ; and in 
so far, when it becomes a question to urge them to 
what is good, or to dissuade them from evil, he 
will exercise double sway over their feelings. We 
are under obligation to improve all the faculties 
which God has given us, for the assistance of our 
fellow-creatures, and among these, the manner of- 
expressing our thoughts, intimately connected as 
it is with the discipline of the mind. 

Too little attention to eloquence of language — 
whether in reading a manuscript, in addressing a 
person, in representation, or in action — is owing 
less to incapacity to appear to greater advantage, 
than to unpardonable indolence, from neglect of 



1 1() SILVIO I'l.l.l l( (). 

line ciillivatiun of our minds, and of the respect 
nliicli wo owe to others. 

But while you feel tluit courtesy is an obliira- 
^ tion to deport v(Mirself in such ii manner as not to 
render y(>ur presence an annoyance to another, hut 
on the contrary, a pleasure and advantage, — never 
indulge angry feelings towards the uncourteous. 
It would be very desirable that they should be 
freed from the dross; but, amidst all their liumilia- 
tion, they still possess tlie gem of nobler mind 
enclosed within it. 

It is not the least triumph of courtesy to bear 
the j)resence of such persons with a (piiet smile, — to 
say nothing of that innumerable list of bores and 
fools. When there remains no hope — no occasion of 
doing them some good — I think it quite fair to 
shun their company , but you should take care 
not to av^oid even them in such a manner as to 
show of what genus they are. They would other- 
^^ ise feel aggrieved, or hate you heartilv ; but 
farther, no human {)atience can go. 



ON GRATITUDE. 117 

SECTION XXIX. 

ON GRATITUDE. 

If we are to consider ourselves under obligation 
to entertain benevolent sentiments, and to show a 
gentle^ courteous demeanour^ in regard to all^ how 
much more do the same motives apply to us 
in the case of persons who have given us proofs of 
affection,, compassion^ and indulgence. 

Commencing with our nearest relatives^ let the 
same principle of grateful return and recognition 
of benefits received be applied to every one who 
may have afforded us disinterested aid either by 
counsel or by deed. 

With regard to other people^, we may sometimes 
be apt to judge with se verity ^ or to show want of 
attention^ and this without incurring much blame ; 
but in the instance of a benefactor we can no 
longer be excused for any deficiency of study ;, in 
order to please him^ how to avoid giving him the 
sllo-htest offence, to detract in no way from his 



.1^. 



way 



reputation, but always to show ourselves eager to 
advocate his cause, and to console him. 

Many persons, when they think they perceive 
in the manner of those to whom they are obliged 
too high an appreciation of their own merit in 



I 18 SILVIO PKLLICO. 

comparison with theirs, got angry, treat it as 
an unj)ar(lonablt' want of discretion, and con- 
sider themselves absolved from all occasion m 
showing farther gratitude. Numbers, too, because 
they are mean enough to blush at benefits received, 
are ingenious in finding reasons for some interested 
motive in the giver — such as ostentation or other 
personal feeling ; and they, in this way, try to find 
some excuse for their own ingratitude. Others, 
again, M'hen they meet with success, hasten to re- 
store what they had received, in order not to feel 
the weight of the obligation ; and this done, they 
conceive themselves wholly free, forgetful of the 
lasting claims which gratitude imposes upon us. 

All kind of devices, indeed, to justify ingrati- 
tude are hollow ; the ingrate is a mean being ; 
and that we may never fall into such a des])icabh' 
state of mind, it is necessary that our gratitudi' 
be not limited — that it should be deeply felt and 
as frankly expressed. 

If your benefactor prides himself upon the ad- 
vantajjes he conferred — if he show vou not that 
delicacy so delightful to the feelings of the 
obliged — if it does not clearly appear that his 
motives for assisting you \vere generous and dis- 
interested — it is not for vou to condemn him. 



ON GRATITUDE* 119 

Throw a veil over his real or supposed faults, and 
behold in him only the good which he has done 
you. Remember the benefit, I repeat, even when 
you shall have repaid him — even with interest 
over and over. 

It is sometimes right to be grateful without 
making public the benefit received ; but so often 
as your conscience shall whisper you that you 
ought to make it known, let no feelings of mean 
shame restrain you; confess yourself obliged to 
the friendly right hand held out to succour you. 
^^ To express your gratitude without a witness/' 
says the excellent moralist Blanchard, ^^ is often 
ingratitude/* 

It is only the man who feels grateful for all 
benefits, — even the least, — whom we can call really 
good. Gratitude is the soul of religion ; of filial 
love; of love for those who love us; of love for 
human society, from which so many of our plea- 
sures, in addition to our safety, are felt to flow. 

By nurturing feelings of gratitude for every 
good thing which we receive at the hands of God 
and of his ministering good men upon earth, we 
acquire greater strength and peace of mind to 
endure the evils of this life, as well as a greater 
disposition to think well of, to forgive, and to 
assist, our fellow-creatures in misfortune. 



l*J(> SILVIO ri:LM((>. 



SECTION XXX. 



HUMILITY, MKKKNESS, FORGIVENESS. 

Pill Die and anger are incompatible with a 
gentle nature ; and hence he cannot be genteel 
in the true sense of the word who has not habitu- 
ated himself to humility and meekness of mind. 
^^ If there be any one sentiment/' says Manzoni, 
in his excellent little book upon Comprehensive 
IMorality — '^ powerful enough to eradicate that 
insulting tone of contempt towards others, it is 
assuredly that of humility. Contempt arises from 
a comparison with others, and a preference given 
to ourselves ; yet how can such a sentiment ever 
take root but in a heart trained to consider and de- 
plore its own miseries, to acknowledge every kind 
of merit as derived from God — to acknowledge 
tliat if God should not afford his restraining 
grace, it might rush into every species of evil ?" 

Invariably restrain your anger, or you will be- 
come harsh and haughty. If anger can do g(K>d, 
it is just and reasonable ; but cases of this kind 
rarely occur. Whoever things it justifiable on 
every occasion only employs a mask to conceal his 
own ill nature. 



HUMILITY, MEEKNESS, FORGIVENESS* 121 

This is a defect of character which is fearfully 
prevalent. Out of twenty with whom you^shall 
speak earnestly^ you will find nineteen^ each of 
whom will presently put himself into a passion^ dila- 
ting with amazing fluency upon the generous indig- 
nation he feels against this or that. All aifect to be 
the most violent^ warm-hearted enemies of every 
species of iniquity and abuse — as if they were the 
only upright people in the world. The country 
in which they live is always the worst upon the 
face of the earth ; the age in which they flourish 
is the vilest in the annals of time ; the institutions 
not founded by them utterly naught -, if they hear 
a man speaking of religion and morality^ they 
invariably set him down for an impostor ; if a rich 
man do not squander his gold, he is an avaricious 
wretch ; if the poor suffer and ask relief, they are 
idle and abandoned ; and if they happen to confer 
the least obligation upon any one, he is to be pro- 
nounced a thankless fellow. To speak ill of all 
individuals, except a few of their own friends for 
manners' sake, appears to them one of the greatest 
privileges of their existence. 

The worst of it is, that this ill- blood, whether 
excited against s^trangers or their immediate 
neighbours, gives a sort of pleasure to almost 

M 



122 SILVIO PELLKO. 

every one who is not the exact object of its 
virulence. Your passionate and satirical man 
will easily l>e taken for a generous fellow, ^vho, 
had lie full sway, would become a hero. The 
meek-spirited, on the other hand, is accustomed 
to be regarded with contemptuous compassion, 
either as an imbecile or a hypocrite. 

The virtues of humility and gentleness are not 
very glorious indeed, but adhere to them ; they 
are more valuable than all glory. These very 
general manifestations of anger and pride only 
tend to show the universal want of love and true 
generosity, and the grand ambition to appear 
better than others, and better than we ourselves 
are. 

Determine to be humble and gentle-minded, 
but at the same time let it be clear that you are 
not either an imbecile or a hypocrite. But how to 
prove this ? By losing patience and sho^\^ng your 
teeth at the calumniator? No; scorn to reply: and, 
with the exception of particular circumstances it 
is impossible to specify, do not lose your patience 
for the sake of a bad man; and neither threaten 
nor reproach him. IMildness springing from 
virtue, not from want of energetic feeling, has 
always reason on its side. By preserving this 



HUMILITY, MEEKNESS, FORGIVENESS. 123 

you humble the haughty more completely than 
they would feel humbled by the most fiery 
eloquence from the lips of anger and contempt. 

This quality^ moreover, may be united with 
dignity calculated to inspire respect. The bad 
feel it. Your silence, while neither flattering nor 
seeking favour, condemns their course of wicked- 
ness ; and they are conscious that you will aban- 
don neither your religion nor your honour in fear 
of their condemnation. 

Reconcile your mind to the idea of having 
enemies; but do not let it disturb you. The 
most beneficent, sincere, inoffensive on earth, 
cannot avoid them. 

There are some wretches whose nature is so 
deeply ingrained with envy that they cannot exist 
without casting their jeers and all kind of false 
accusations against every man who enjoys some 
reputation. 

Have courage to be gentle and forgiving of 
heart to those misguided beings who injure or wish 
to injure you : ^^ not only seven times," said our 
Saviour, ^^ but seventy times seven 3" meaning to 
say without limit. 

Duels and all forms of revenge are the insanity 
of passion, Rancour is a mixture of pride and 



1:^4 SILVIO IM-LLICO. 

baseness, more tlefidly tliaii hatred itself. By for 
giving an injury you may change an enemy into 
a friend, a j)erverted mind into a heini^ caj) ibK.' of 
ac([uiring noble sentiments. Oh, how beautiful and 
how consoling is such a triumph ! how immeasurably 
does it surpassin real grandeur all those horrible vic- 
tories of man ; the bad, mean offspring of reveni^e. 
And what if an offender, whom you have par- 
doned, should continue irreconcilable, and sliould 
live and die still execrating you : have you lost 
any thing by a good act ? Have not you ac(piired 
the greatest jewel in the crown of human virtues — 
that of preserving your magnanimity of mind ? 



SECTION XXXI. 

ON COURAGE. 

Courage always! without this, there can be 
no virtue. You must have courage in order to 
subdue your egotism, and to enable you to do good. 
Courage is no less necessary to conquer your 
natural indolence, and to support you through all 
laudable studies. Courage also to defend your 
country, and to protect your fellow-creature in 
ev(»ry emergency; — courage to withstand bad ex- 
ample and undeserved ridicule; courage to suffer, 



ON COURAGE. 125 

to bear disease^ privation^ and sorrows of every 
kind without weak lamentations ; — to aspire to a 
degree of perfection not to be attained upon earthy 
yet to which if we do not aspire, in accordance 
with the sublime intimation held out in scripture, 
we shall forfeit all true nobility of mind. 

Whatever may be the price you set upon your 
patrimony^ your honour — life ; hold yourself in 
readiness, at all times, to sacrifice every thing to 
duty, should duty exact such sacrifices from you. 
Without this abrogation of self; — this renunciation 
of every earthly advantage rather than to retain it 
by a compact with evil ; a man can shew no hero- 
ism of character; nay, he may even become a 
monster ! ^^ For no one" in the words of Cicero, can 
be just who fears death, sorrow, exile, and poverty, 
or who prefers those things, which are the opposite 
of these, to equity^." To live with feelings 
alienated from the transitory prosperity by which 
we are surrounded appears to some persons an 
impracticable and harsh resolve, almost allied to 
barbarism. It is, nevertheless, true that, without 
a timely indifference to these extraneous goods, we 
neither know how to live nor to die worthily. 



■■' Cicero dc Off. Book li. c. 9. 
M 2 



12() SM.\1(> riM.MCO. 

('ouiat^e is the great (jUiility to raise the miiul to 
every virtuous undertaking ; but let us take care 
that it (h) not run into pride and ferocity. 

They \vlio think, or pretend they think, that 
courage cannot be united to gentle sentiments ; 
they who accustom themselves to vain boastings, 
to a thirst for commotion and bloodshed, do dis- 
credit to that energy of will and strength of arm 
entrusted to them by the Deity to make a good 
and exemplary use of in the great family of society. 
In general these men are the least ardent in 
serious peril, and to save themselves they would 
betray their own father and brothers. It is re- 
marked that the first to set an example of flight to 
the rest of an army arc the very boasters who 
before entering the field laughed at the pale cheek 
of their companions, and cast unbecoming asper- 
sions upon the enemy. 



SECTION XXXII. 

iiktIi apprkciation of life, and fortitude 
to meet death. 

IManv books, I am aware, treat of moral obli- 
fialions in a manner more extended and more 



APPRECIATION OF LIFE, ETC. 127 

ornate; but I, my young friend^ have undertaken 
simply to present you with a manual in which I 
might treat briefly of the whole which I conceived 
necessary to urge upon your attention. 

I have now only to add: let not the weight 
of these duties alarm you ; they are only insup- 
portable to the idle and the vicious. Let us 
rather be of good hearty and we shall discover in 
each duty a mysterious beauty which invites us 
to love it. We shall feel a wonderful power 
augment our natural strength in proportion as we 
ascend the arduous path of virtue. You will 
experience that man is a superior being to that 
which he appears^ provided he aspire strenuously 
to attain the full scope of his destination,, which 
consists in raising himself above all low and 
grovelling passions ; in cultivating the noblest 
with constant spirit, and at length approaching 
by such means to immortal communion with God 
himself. 

Value life ; but not so as to love it for mere 
vulgar pleasures and despicable views of am- 
bition. Prize it only for that something more 
important, more elevated, and divine ; because it 
is the arena of merit ; dear to the eye of Omni- 
potence; glorious to Him ; glorious and necessary 



128 SILVIO PELLKO. 

to (Hirsclvos. Love it then, notwithstanding its 
sorrows, or nxther for its sorrows, since these lend 
it a beauty and dignity worthy of an imperishable 
mind. It is these which cause to s])rin^ up, to 
unfoUl, and to bear, the fruit of generous tlioughts 
and noble determinations in tlic breast of man. 

Yet be ever mindful that this life which you 
ought to estimate is given you but for a brief 
period. Dissipate it not in too many relax- 
ations or enjoyments. Give only to joy and plea- 
sure what is necessary, so much as may seem 
good for your health and the comforts of others. 
Prefer, when you can, to make your pleasure 
chiefly consist in laudable employment ; I mean, 
by serving your fellow-citizens with a spirit of 
magnanimous brotherhood, and in serving vour 
God with the filial love and obedience due to him. 

And finally, while thus attached to life by some 
of its nobler ties, forget not the rej)ose that awaits 
you as its evening draws nigh, on the pillow of 
the tomb. The attempt to disguise the necessity 
of dying is a weakness calculated to damp our 
ardour for doing good. You are not to hasten 
that solemn moment by any fault of your own ; 
but do not dcsirt! to shun it out of fear. Be 
ready to peril your life in order to save another, and 



APPRECIATION OF LIFE, ETC. 129 

more especially for the salvation of your country. 
In whatever form it may be your destiny to meet 
it, show a prompt spirit^ a dignified courage^ and 
sanctify it with all the sincerity and the energy 
of your faith. 

By observing all this, you will stand con- 
spicuous, in the noblest sense, as a man and a 
citizen ; you will be the benefactor of society, 
and the author of your own happiness. 



THE END. 



LONDON : 
raiXTEi) BY BRADBURY AND EVANS, WHITEFRIAKS. 



Ap?9 



K^,. 



* 



'•V 






